Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology

Later, during the reign of Louis XIV, the mineralogical collection of the cabinet du roi was enriched on the orders of the king and put on public display as of 1745.

During the period, in June 1793, the revolutionaries who were ruling France transformed the Jardin royal des plantes médicinales into the still existing Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, but at this point in time the mineralogical and geological samples remained in the old cabinet du roi.

The right-hand wing was originally intended to receive the Muséum's main library, as still stated in the right-side pediment of the building, where the word Bibliothèque ('Library') still can be read.

In the late months of 1959, the old cabinet du roi was demolished in order to build on its footprint the current central library of the Muséum.

In 1972, as per the Muséum's herbarium had left the Gallery's left-wing since 1935, French paleontologist Jean-Pierre Lehman opened a galerie de Paléobotanique ('Gallery of Paleobotany') in this area of the building.

The Gallery of Paleobotany was permanently dismantled in 2005, although a few of its fossil plants are currently on exhibition at the galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée and at one of the greenhouses of the Muséum.