The Musée de l'Histoire de France is a museum that was created by King Louis Philippe I in the Palace of Versailles and opened in 1837. At the time, it represented an ambitious project of national reconciliation between the hitherto competing narratives of the French monarchy and the French Revolution, to which Louis-Philippe devoted significant personal attention. Whereas it gradually faded in importance as a museum in the later 19th century, its lavish historicist decoration remains a major exemplar of the art of France's July Monarchy.

Louis Philippe I, nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France. As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wars and was promoted to lieutenant general by the age of nineteen, but he broke with the Republic over its decision to execute King Louis XVI. He fled to Switzerland in 1793 after being connected with a plot to restore France's monarchy. His father Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, fell under suspicion and was executed during the Reign of Terror.