Archives Nationales (France)


The Archives nationales are the national archives of France. They preserve the archives of the French state, apart from the archives of the Ministry of Armed Forces and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as these two ministries have their own archive services, the Defence Historical Service and respectively. The National Archives of France also keep the archives of local secular and religious institutions from the Paris Region seized at the time of the French Revolution, as well as the archives produced by the notaries of Paris during five centuries, and many private archives donated or placed in the custody of the National Archives by prominent aristocratic families, industrialists, and historical figures.
The National Archives have one of the largest and oldest archival collections in the world. As of 2022, they held of physical records from the year 625 to the present time, and as of 2020 74.75 terabytes of electronic archives.
To deal with this massive volume of documents, the National Archives currently operate from two sites in the Paris Region: the historical site of the National Archives in the heart of Paris, which contains the physical records of the French state from before the French Revolution as well as the records of the Paris notaries from all periods, and the newer site at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, in the northern suburbs of Paris, opened in 2013, which contains all the physical records of the French state since the French Revolution, as well as the private archives from all periods.
Two sister agencies, the National Overseas Archives and the are located in Aix-en-Provence and in Roubaix respectively. These are managed separately from the National Archives.

History

The Archives nationales are heir to the Trésor des chartes, the archives of the French crown that were kept in the ancient Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité until the French Revolution, although the Trésor des chartes was more limited in scope than the current Archives nationales, since it contained only charters and legal records constituting title deeds for the French crown, used to establish the rights of French kings over crown lands. The Trésor des chartes today still forms one of the most renowned archival series in the collections of the National Archives.
The Archives nationales were created at the time of the French Revolution in 1790. It was a state decree of 1794 that made it mandatory to centralise all the pre-French Revolution private and public archives seized by the revolutionaries, completed by a law passed in 1796 which created departmental archives in the departments of France to alleviate the burden on the Archives nationales in Paris, thus creating the collections of the French archives as we know them today. In 1800 the Archives nationales became an autonomous body of the French state.

Archives of France

The National Archives are under the authority of the Archives of France administration in the Ministry of Culture. The Archives of France also manage the 101 departmental archives located in the prefectures of each of the 100 departments of France plus the city of Paris, as well as various other local archives, plus 12 more recent regional archives. The departmental and local archives contain all the archives from the deconcentrated branches of the French state, as well as all the archives of the pre-French Revolution provincial and local institutions seized by the revolutionaries.
In addition to the of physical records and 74.75 terabytes of electronic archives kept by the National Archives and its sister agencies, the National Overseas Archives in Aix-en-Provence and the in Roubaix, this as of the end of 2020, another of physical records and 225.25 terabytes of electronic archives were kept in the regional, departmental and local archives in the end of 2020, in particular the church records and notarial records used by genealogists.
The archives of the Ministry of Armed Forces and the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are managed separately by their respective ministries and do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Archives of France administration.

Collections

The National Archives have one of the largest and most important archival collections in the world. As of 2022, the National Archives contained of physical records and as 2020 74.75 terabytes of electronic archives, an enormous mass of documents growing every year.
Due to the events of the French Revolution, the pre-French Revolution archives kept by the National Archives are not just the archives of the central state, but also the many local archives of the Paris region, such as all the archives of the abbeys surrounding Paris, the archives of the churches of Paris, and the archives of the medieval Paris city hall. Thus, the National Archives serve as the archives of the French central state for records from 1790 onwards, but for records before 1790 they serve as both the archives of the central state and the local archives of Paris and its region. The National Archives, however, do not keep the pre-1790 church records of Paris. These were kept at the municipal archives of Paris and at the Palais de Justice, and were entirely destroyed by fires set by extremists at the end of the Paris Commune in May 1871 which destroyed both the municipal archives and a large part of the Palais de Justice.
The oldest original record kept at the National Archives is a papyrus dated AD 625 coming from the archives of the Royal Abbey of St Denis seized at the time of the French Revolution. This papyrus is the confirmation by King Chlothar II of a grant of land in the city of Paris to the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis previously made by the vir illustris Dagobert, son of Baddo. This charter is the oldest original one kept by the National Archives, but the National Archives possess medieval copies of earlier records from the 6th century. The National Archives also possess a small fragment of an original papyrus record from the year 619 or 620, a private donation, probably to the basilica of St Denis, but the charter from 625 is the oldest one preserved in its entirety.
The National Archives keep 211 authentic, original records from the 1st millennium. The oldest Merovingian records are all written on papyrus imported from Egypt, in continuation of Roman practices. Records written on parchment appear after 670, due to the Muslim conquest of the Southern Mediterranean, and completely replace papyrus records within a few decades.
Detail of the 211 authentic, original records from before the year 1000 kept by the National Archives:
YearsNumber of
authentic records		Notes
600-6499Oldest record: year 625. All written on papyrus.
650-699278 written on papyrus; 19 written on parchment.
700-74910All written on parchment.
750-7994038 written on parchment; 2 written on papyrus.
800-84950All written on parchment.
850-8995149 written on parchment; 2 written on papyrus.
900-94912All written on parchment.
950-99912All written on parchment.

In total, the National Archives possess 47 original records from the Merovingian period. They also possess 5 original records from the reign of Pepin the Short, 31 from the reign of Charlemagne, 28 from the reign of Louis the Pious, 69 from the reign of Charles the Bald, 4 from the reign of Hugh Capet, 21 from the reign of Robert the Pious, and then a rapidly increasing number of original records after Robert the Pious, with for example more than 1,000 original records from the reign of Philip Augustus and several thousand original records from the reign of Saint Louis.
The National Archives also hold the original draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, dating from 1789, a core statement of the values of the French Revolution which had a major impact on the development of popular conceptions of individual liberty and democracy in Europe and worldwide. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme Register in 2003 in recognition of its historical significance.

Sites

Due to the massive volume of documents and records kept by the National Archives, these have been divided among two sites, one in the historic center of Paris, the other one in the northern Parisian suburb of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, complemented by a microform centre at the Château d'Espeyran, in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, serving as a back-up in case original documents are destroyed. A third site in the Paris Region, at Fontainebleau, was closed in 2016 and its content moved to Pierrefitte-sur-Seine.

Paris

The National Archives has been located since 1808 in a group of buildings comprising the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan in the district of Le Marais in the centre of Paris.
Since the opening of the Pierrefitte-sur-Seine site in 2013, the historic Paris site stores only the documents and records from before the French Revolution, as well as the so-called Minutier central of Paris, i.e. the archives of all the Parisian notaries extending from the 15th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Since 1867 it has also housed the Musée des Archives Nationales.
In 2004, the Paris site of the National Archives kept of physical records: of pre-French Revolution archives; of records of the French central state from 1790 to 1958; of Paris notary records ; of private archives, notably the archives of the aristocratic families seized at the time of the French Revolution; of books; and finally of ancient maps and plans.
In 2012-2013, all archives, maps and plans from 1790 to the 20th century, as well as all private archives from all periods, were moved to the new site of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, and as a result the amount of archives stored at the historic Paris site was reduced to of physical records.
The space liberated by the departure of more than 50 km of records allowed the National Archives to resume the collection of archives from the Paris notaries, in particular late 19th and early 20th centuries records which hadn't been collected yet. As of 2022, the Minutier central of the Paris notaries stored at the National Archives was filling of shelves, representing 20 million notary records from the 1460s to the first half of the 20th century.