Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits (Museum of Letters and Manuscripts)

Just opened in Paris, it houses a trove of treasures.

Located in a 17th-century town house in the St. Germain des Pres district, the 6,500-square-foot museum contains personal papers from the gamut of civilization's public figures.

The roughly 2,000 documents include letters, manuscripts, photos, musical scores, government forms, telegraph cables, and postcards.

For example, there's Teddy Roosevelt's signed dinner menu from his 1909 African hunting trip.

The menu included turtle soup, queen croquettes "Uganda Style," and "illuminated ice cream."

The exhibitions are mostly described in French, but so what?

That won't help with Catherine the Great's letters, or Churchill's, or Gandhi's (composed in Gujarati script).

Or with Mozart or Beethoven's ideas for compositions, or Einstein's doodles from the time he was developing the theory of relativity.

Eisenhower's 1947 letter to an old West Point buddy shows that you just never know; he wrote, "I want no part of any political job."

The museum's at 8 Rue de Nesle in the 6th arrondissement. Nearest Metro: St. Michel or Odeon. Admission $10. Phone: 011-33-1-4051-0225.

[via Seth Sherwood and the Washington Post]