National Naval Museum in Paris

About

The Musée national de la Marine in Paris traces its origins to 1748, when Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau donated a collection of ship models to Louis XV. A "Salle de Marine" was installed on the ground floor of the Louvre in 1752; it was reorganized as the "Musée Dauphin" under Charles X in 1827 and renamed the Musée de la Marine in 1919. In 1943 the museum moved from the Louvre to the Palais de Chaillot, where it remains today, and is described as the oldest maritime museum in the world. After six years of renovation from 2017 to 2023, it reopened on November 17, 2023. The redesign, by architecture firms Snøhetta and h2o, spans roughly 8,000 square meters, with about 2,500 square meters of exhibition space. The reopening display presents more than 1,000 restored objects organized into thematic galleries, and the museum also operates branch sites in Brest, Rochefort, Port-Louis, and Toulon.