Exploring the Museum of Antiquities, Rouen, France

I visited Rouen as part of a larger tour of France, and one of the highlights of my visit was going to the Museum of Antiquities & Museum of Natural History. (They’re basically in the same building so it’s easy to go to both in one visit.)

I really liked this museum– or at least I liked half of it! The rooms featuring artifacts from the Roman era and onwards were great, with some amazing statues, tapestries, pots, etc.! But the natural history part was so weird: tons of taxidermy animals inside of glass cabinets. Turns out the taxidermy is fairly typical for French museums, though unusual compared to US museums where we have more things like skeletons and animal recreations.

This post shares some of the interesting things I saw in the museum(s) during my visit.

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Museum Quick Info

Address: 198 Rue Beauvoisine, Rouen

Free entry for permanent exhibits, €4 admission for temporary exhibitions.

Open Tuesday-Sunday afternoons, closed Mondays. More info here.

The museum has a cloakroom, shop and restrooms, plus coffee vending machines.

🤔 Looking for other fun things to do in Rouen?

Antiquities Museum, Rouen

The museum is housed in a converted 17th century convent, so it’s got some great vaulted ceilings reminiscent of the nearby gothic churches.

Religious Artifacts

This is the majority of the collection, I’d say, and most of it is Christian religious artifacts in particular. They do have a room for Ancient Egyptian artifacts as well, and some Greek/Roman/Mesopotamia artifacts.

Ancient Roman Artifacts

I was hoping this section would be bigger than it was, but most of the interesting things were tiny carvings and small jugs and whatnot. However, they do have an amazing mosaic you can see and walk around!

Tapestries

When I visited, they had a special section for tapestries and included modern artists! It was very difficult to get good photos as the room was super dark, but here’s one I managed to get.

Natural History Museum

The majority of the display is behind glass in these cabinets, which makes it a bit difficult to see the items but it DOES have a fun, almost spooky 19th century haunted school feel to it. The floors are all wooden and creak ominously every time you move.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really enjoyed my visit to the museum(s). At the time, they didn’t have every info plaque in French AND English, so I had to do a lot of translating with Google Translate. The major parts of the exhibits did have large English language plaques going over the history of the things in that particular section, but the smaller parts weren’t 100% translated. Just fyi!

I’d say give yourself at least two hours to get through everything in the museum, more if you plan to translate and read every info plaque. If you only have a little bit of time, then just quickly go through the main part of the antiquities museum and skip the natural history museum.

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