Musée d'Aquitaine

The Musée d'Aquitaine is the main history museum of Bordeaux and the wider region. It is housed in a former university building on the cours Pasteur, a short walk from the cathedral, in the part of the city that grew up around the old university. The collections trace the human story of this part of south-west France from the Palaeolithic to the present day, so it works well as a first stop for anyone who wants context before walking the streets of the city.

The prehistoric rooms are among the strongest. The region around the Dordogne and the Vézère valley is one of the richest in Europe for Ice Age sites, and the museum shows tools, carved objects and art from those places. The best-known piece is the Venus of Laussel, a limestone relief of a female figure holding a horn, carved around 25,000 years ago and found at a rock shelter in the Dordogne. Alongside it are objects from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.

The Gallo-Roman section covers the period when Bordeaux was the port city of Burdigala. It shows stonework, inscriptions, mosaics and everyday objects from the Roman town, which was an important trading centre linked to wine and to the Atlantic. Medieval rooms follow, with pieces from the time when Aquitaine was linked to the English crown, and then the story of Bordeaux's rise as a port in the eighteenth century.

One of the museum's most important and most discussed galleries deals with the Atlantic trade and slavery. Bordeaux was one of the main French ports involved in the slave trade, and the exhibition lays out how the city grew rich from it, with documents, objects and testimonies. It is a serious, thoughtful display and well worth the time. Other rooms cover colonial history, the Bordeaux of the nineteenth century, and the world of the wine trade and ordinary life along the Garonne.

The museum also puts on temporary exhibitions, and its library and archives are open to researchers. The visit is more comfortable if you plan two to three hours and pick the periods that interest you most. It is not a flashy museum, but a solid one with clear labelling. The Basilique Saint-Michel and the Cathédrale Saint-André are within easy walking distance, so the museum fits into a morning of heritage sights before lunch at the Capucins market. It suits history enthusiasts, curious visitors and families with older children.