The Musée du Tabac is housed in the Maison Peyrarède, a beautifully restored Renaissance townhouse sometimes called the Maison Henri IV after a visit the king is supposed to have made. The collection traces the use of tobacco from pre-Columbian America, through the European diplomatic and medical experiments of the 16th century, to the industrial cigarette of the 20th.
The displays are surprisingly engaging even for non-smokers — carved pipes from West Africa and the South Pacific, silver and tortoiseshell snuffboxes, smoking-themed paintings and prints, and a room devoted to the technical history of tobacco growing in the Bergerac region. The building itself is worth the entry fee; the carved stone fireplaces and the painted ceilings of the upper rooms are among the finest of their period in the town.