National Museum of the Marine

Toulon, France

National Museum of the Marine is located in the historic centre of Toulon on Monsenergue Square. The exposition is placed in the old city arsenal (built in 1814 during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte). Central facade of the museum is decorated with impressive statues of the Atlantes created the famous master of the 17th century, Pierre Puget.

The visitors of the museum can see here the most unique collection of models and maquettes of marine vessels for different purposes in a variety of scales (starting from the 18th century to the present day), from the ancient galleys to modern aircraft carriers.

Moreover a variety of ship equipment, collection of old cannons and the first 'version' of the famous Maxim gun, the samples of the sailors’ uniforms of different years and their camp household items are kept here.

Also unique historical documents related to the activities of the port of Toulon and magnificent works of famous marine painters are among the exhibits. It is worth specially focus that the Museum of the Marine of in Toulon has in its exposition the entire 'Russian' section where you can see many genuine artifacts devoted to the Russian-French relations.

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Address

Quai Consigne, Toulon, France
See all sites in Toulon

Details

Founded: 1814
Category: Museums in France

More Information

info-provence.com

Rating

4.4/5 (based on Google user reviews)

User Reviews

Richard Lewis (2 years ago)
Nice museum. Not the biggest in the world but informative
Rıza Özutku (2 years ago)
It is not a very rich museum. There is too little English information in the museum. Take a audio guide for the visit.
Charlene Elliott (2 years ago)
What a cool museum! Kids under 18 free of charge, adults 6.50€ each. Set over two floors of lots of information on the Marine and Naval history of Toulon. Very informative and the kids enjoyed listening to the free English audio guides to the stories behind the paintings, model boats/ships and buildings. Not a large museum, we spent 1.5 hours there. Toilets and gift shop at the entrance.
Steve Kleiman (3 years ago)
Well-organized, easy to follow explanation of birth, development, and modern day relevance of Toulon port. Wish there was more English. Museum has a great story to tell and wealth of artifacts & models to tell it. Top-level narrative is wonderfully simple to follow on big, sequentially numbered placards with French, English, and German. Unfortunately diving down beneath that top-level narrative one finds no translations. I’d have loved to learn more about many specific artifacts which are captioned only in French. A good audio guide is available, but it does not fill the gaps of this French-only content. Hopefully museum will fully translate these wonderful exhibits such that international visitors can fully embrace Toulon’s maritime history. VISITED: 24 November 2021
Joel Le (3 years ago)
Learning is really important and this Museum was good, learned about french history is good!
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