La Rochelle Maritime Museum

About

Launched in 1988 by an association, the Maritime Museum is a floating museum moored in the Bassin des Chalutiers, the old trawler basin of the Vieux-Port; it has since joined the municipal museums of the City of La Rochelle. Its heritage fleet numbers nine vessels, eight of them listed as historic monuments, and three of them can be boarded.

Its flagship is France I, a weather ship launched at Le Havre in 1958 and based at La Pallice from 1959. For 27 years it collected meteorological data far out in the Atlantic — at the “Roméo” station from 1976 — and also helped aircraft and ships in distress, until satellites took over in 1985. It was the museum’s first acquisition: more than 15,000 people lined the quays when it arrived.

Alongside lie the stern trawler Angoumois, one of La Rochelle’s last industrial trawlers, withdrawn in 1992 after 23 years at sea and saved from the scrapyard (its deck and bridge are open again after restoration), the harbour tug Saint-Gilles (1958), the side trawler Manuel Joël (1954) and the bucket dredger TD6, built in Nantes in 1906. The ketch Joshua (1962), on which Bernard Moitessier sailed alone one and a half times around the world in 1968–1969, still sails about 150 days a year.

Since 2015 the Galerie des pavillons, dressed with ten giant spinnaker-shaped sails, has housed the exhibitions; “Climat-Océan”, developed with the Natural History Museum, has been on show since 2019 and was updated in 2023.

Visitor information

Closed on Mondays, 1 May, 25 December and 1 January; last entry one hour before closing. The museum gives the end of the high season as 15 or 21 September depending on the page — check before you go. Combined tickets: three museums €18, with the towers €15, inter-museum pass €30.

On the map

Sources: museemaritime.larochelle.fr · Wikipedia (Musée maritime de La Rochelle). Checked 14 October 2026.