Introduction

In 1748, Henri-Duhamel du Monceau, Inspector-General of the French Navy, presented his collection of model ships and naval machinery to King Louis XV.
They were set out in the Marine Room at the Louvre, for the instruction of students of the newly-founded school of naval engineering and architecture.

Today, these objects form the core of the collections of France's maritime museum, the Musée National de la Marine. The museum is, alongside the Central Naval Museum of Saint Petersburg, founded in 1709, the oldest maritime museum in the world.

Since 1943, it has stood inside the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, looking across to the Eiffel Tower. With over 40,000 objects in its care, its vocation is to conserve the nation's seafaring heritage.

The museum is a centre for maritime culture. Its collections embrace every aspect of maritime history, from eighteenth-century models to heroic expeditions and the golden age of the ocean liner, ending with the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, and the acquisition and restoration of Eric Tabarly's Pen Duick V, which still sails today.

The Musée National de la Marine is anchored in Paris and in four ports, the historic sites of naval arsenals:
- Brest, inside the castle,
- Port-Louis, inside the citadel
- Rochefort, in Hôtel de Cheusses and the School of Naval Medicine
- Toulon, in the arsenal

Together, its six sites welcome more than 450,000 visitors in 2008.

Through these diverse locations, the museum makes an important contribution to culture in each region, maintains close ties with local maritime activities and traditions, and hosts ambitious temporary exhibitions, in particular in Paris.

The Musée National de la Marine brings almost three centuries of French history to life, and sheds light on every aspect of the seafaring world today.