This essay analyses the shift in the archaeological gaze in Romantic France by focusing on the evolution of Charles Nodier and Baron Taylor's Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France from the 1820s to the 1830s, and on Prosper Mérimée's Notes de voyages (1835-1840). Examining the picturesque aesthetic at play in the early texts and illustrations of Nodier and Taylor's work, it shows how the sentimental and poetic posture epitomised under the Restoration gave way to a more learned approach for the discovery of historical monuments, thus reflecting the archaeologists and administrators' call for the scientific foundation of archaeology. As Inspector of Historical Monuments, Prosper Mérimée himself promoted monumental autopsy for an accurate understanding of monuments in his own travel notes. Both approaches postulated travel and its reliance on the visual as the basis for any apprehension of the monuments. However, whereas the picturesque relied on emotion and imagination, autopsy fostered instead attentive factual descriptions as the premise for the development of a scientific archaeology.