Discover the museum

With its multimedia stations, the History Museum is at the cutting edge of contemporary museography. Throughout its 32 rooms, it showcases over 1,500 objects in its collection. A visit here paints a portrait of the city from its origins to the present metropolis we know and love today.  

The sections on the Slave Trade, slavery, and the two World Wars have become international references. Come discover the remarkable architecture and landmark events that make up the history of both the city and the castle: the Edict of Nantes, industrialization (LU, BN), and shipbuilding, to name only a few. 

The museum also offers a new lens through which one can view the past: “global” history. Through a global, interconnected history, the public is invited to look at the past in the same way it looks at the present. Showing history on a scale of different continents allows us not to base it onprefabricated ideas, and not to see it solely from a European, Western, conqueror’s point of view, but instead to get a little distance and see it in a new light.

In order to do this, we also turned to contemporary creativity – for instance through Pierrick Sorin’s use of multimedia, which takes up all of room 32, and offers a vision of the city.