Forgeries and counterfeiters, from the Middle Ages to the present day: the free exhibition at the National Archives

Can you tell the real from the fake? From October 15, 2025 to February 2, 2026, the National Archives and the Banque de France will be testing your critical thinking skills in their new exhibition on famous forgeries from history.

In a world where fake news has become legion, the National Archives plungesus into the world of counterfeiting through its new exhibition, from October 15, 2025 to February 2, 2026, in partnership with the Banque de France.

Featuring some one hundred historical and unusual items, from counterfeit money and papers to imitated works of art and counterfeit goods, the exhibition explores the work of counterfeiters in all its forms, and aims to raise public awareness of the importance of authenticity and critical thinking.

As forgeries have been particularly numerous throughout history, the National Archives focus on France, with some fifteen astonishing stories and exceptional objects, such as the forgery at the heart of the Dreyfus affair, a stuffed mermaid or one ofIndiana Jones ' crystal skulls! Three points of view help us to better understand this process: that of the forger, the expert and the dupe.

After all, being a counterfeiter is a skill, as the swindler is often cunning and technically sophisticated. In the face of this threat, experts have developed increasingly sophisticated methods for tracking down forgeries, in step with technological advances.

You can weigh three gold bars and discover which one is closest in weight to the real thing, admire counterfeits of varying degrees of craftsmanship (some of which made us laugh), and learn more about true and sometimes incredible stories, which show that fakes can be a threat as well as a lifesaver, especially during wartime.

Once upon a time, being a forger meant the death penalty! Yet even Napoleon indulged in forgery to deceive his enemies... The exhibition is designed to be fun, with small inserts inviting visitors to observe the differences between what's real and what's forged, and pictograms representing a masked man, which link to a booklet-game for children aged 8 and over, turning them into little investigators! It's also very dense, with lots of text to read on the walls.

The Banque de France also offers an educational workshop entitled "Touch, Look, Tilt", to help you recognize counterfeit banknotes and other fakes in a fun way, using a few simple tricks to move from theory to practice. Unfortunately, the mediators are only on site on Saturdays and Sundays, from 2.15pm to 6pm.

In the rooms that follow, a number of artistic installations focus on fake news, including a model that plunges us into the making of a video image, or archive images modified by artificial intelligence, where you'll have to find the real ones among the fakes! For a free exhibition, it's worth noting the great care taken in staging it, with a large number of rooms and a wide variety of exhibits.