Musée du Nouveau Monde

Museum of the transatlantic trade, in an old ship-owner's mansion

The Musée du Nouveau Monde occupies the Hôtel Fleuriau, a townhouse built in 1740 by a ship-owner who had made his fortune in the West Indies sugar trade. The museum tells the story of La Rochelle's role in the colonisation of the Americas: the early voyages to New France, the founding of Québec, the Acadian deportations, and — at length — the transatlantic slave trade in which the town was deeply implicated.

The displays use the family's own records and possessions to make a difficult history concrete. The first-floor salons are kept furnished as in the 18th century. Allow ninety minutes. The Musée d'Orbigny-Bernon nearby covers Asian export ceramics and the later 19th-century city.

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A story
La Rochelle was the major French port of the slave triangle in the 18th century — second only to Nantes. The museum's collections, donated by the descendants of the Fleuriau family who built the house, do not look away: alongside the polished mahogany and porcelain are the registers of slave ships and the inventories of human cargo.

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