National Archaeological Museum

About

The royal château at Saint-Germain-en-Laye served as a residence of the French crown until Louis XIV departed for Versailles in 1682, and it later housed a military penitentiary. On March 8, 1862, an imperial decree from Napoleon III — a man captivated by the figure of Julius Caesar — gave the château a new purpose. Architect Eugène Millet, a pupil of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, led the restoration, and on May 12, 1867, Napoleon III inaugurated the first seven finished rooms even as work continued elsewhere in the building. The full restoration was not completed until 1907. Opened under the name Gallo-Roman Museum, the institution was renamed the Musée des Antiquités nationales in 1879 and became today's Musée d'Archéologie nationale in 2005. Its exhibitions are organized around seven chronological periods, from the Paleolithic to the Merovingian era, and among the rooms of the old royal château, visitors encounter the collection assembled by Édouard Piette alongside artifacts from the Merovingian era.