The Château-Musée occupies a medieval castle built in the 13th century by the counts of Boulogne on Roman foundations. The castle itself — a square plan with round corner towers and a substantial gatehouse — is an impressive structure that rewards attention before you enter the museum inside. The castle changed hands repeatedly between French, Burgundian, and English rulers; Henry VIII of England stayed here on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.
The museum collection inside is eclectic and interesting: Egyptian antiquities brought back by Boulogne's early 19th-century merchants, Greek ceramics, indigenous art from North America collected in the 18th century, and a substantial section on the local history of the port. The Inuit and First Nations collection is particularly fine — one of the most significant in France — assembled by a Boulogne sea captain who wintered in Labrador in the 1860s.