The Museum of Aquitaine (Bordeaux, France)

The Museum of Aquitaine in its current form was officially created in 1963 by museologist Georges-Henri Rivière, who was tasked with reorganising France’s museums of history, archaeology and ethnology after the war. The museum is the result of the merger of several public collections built up by the city since the sixteenth century. In 1963, collections from other museums in Bordeaux were brought together at the Musée Lapidaire, which was then renamed the Museum of Aquitaine. Today, the museum boasts over 1.3 million pieces, illustrating the history of Bordeaux and the local region from prehistory to the twentieth century. Prestigious collections of regional and extra-European archaeology, history and ethnography retrace the lives of the Aquitaine people and their relationship with the rest of the world. Ship owners, sailors, missionaries, explorers and doctors all brought back objects from Africa, Oceania and the Americas to Bordeaux: the museum’s extra-European collection comprises 5000 different pieces.