Museums - Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, d'Archéologie et d'Ethnographie

Founded in 1832, the museum is located in the heart of the Parc Botanique Emmanuel Liais. Its ethnographic collections are displayed on the first floor and are as varied as they are interesting. A noteworthy Eskimo collection, brought back from Greenland in 1836, consists primarily of clothing and fishing gear. The Oceanic objects (Marquesas Islands, Vanuatu, Tahiti, Solomon Islands), partly collected by Henri Jouan in the nineteenth century, are world class and include clubs and sculpted paddles produced without metal tools and prior to contact with the West. There are also tapa cloths, masks, engraved bamboo pieces, and a rare red lava sculpted pig’s head from Nuku Hiva. Africa and the Pre-Columbian world are also well represented with beautiful Benin material and a statue of a Huaxtec goddess dating from AD 600.