The city's main history museum, covering 25,000 years from prehistoric cave to colonial port
The Musée d'Aquitaine covers the full arc of the region's history from prehistoric times through the Roman and medieval periods to the present. The prehistoric section is strong, with finds from the Dordogne caves that put the region's Cro-Magnon heritage in context. The Roman section covers Burdigala — the Roman city of Bordeaux — with mosaic floors, inscriptions, and sculpture.
The museum is on the Cours Pasteur near the university quarter, about ten minutes' walk from the cathedral. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month and on certain other occasions; otherwise a modest fee applies. Allow at least two hours.
A story
One of the most striking sections of the museum covers Bordeaux's role in the Atlantic slave trade — the city was France's largest slave-trading port after Nantes, and the wealth of the 18th-century architecture that makes Bordeaux beautiful was built substantially on that trade. The museum addresses this without flinching, including a section on the memorial sculpture 'Strange Fruit' installed near the Place de la Bourse. It is a rare example of a European city grappling honestly with its colonial history in its principal civic museum.