Maisons Comtoises de Nancray, Open-air museum in Nancray, France

Maisons Comtoises de Nancray is an open-air museum of 36 authentic rural buildings from Franche-Comté, reassembled on 16 hectares. Its entrance is a light-plastered building with a dark tiled roof, a tall arched doorway bearing the word "musée", and a banner reading "MUSÉE DE PLEIN AIR". The houses, furnished as if lived in, represent ways of dwelling between 1770 and 1950.

The open-air museum was conceived by abbé Jean Garneret (1907-2002), who had founded a rural museum at Corcelles-Ferrières in 1955, moved to the citadel of Besançon in 1960, and proposed an open-air site from 1965. The prefect authorised construction in 1983, and the museum opened on 1 June 1988 with five houses. Each building was dismantled at its original site, transported and reassembled here.

The buildings are grouped by the region they came from: Haut-Doubs, Sundgau, Haut-Jura and the Vosges saônoises. A 19th-century caborde, a winegrower's shelter moved from Besançon in 2017, stands beside a vineyard planted with the five AOC grape varieties of the Jura. The interiors are furnished as if still lived in, and a 1944 apiary by cabinetmaker Antoine Perrey holds 20 Burki-Jeker hives.

The museum spreads over 16 hectares 15 km from Besançon, with buildings grouped by region of Franche-Comté, from the Haut-Doubs to the Vosges saônoises. Visitors walk between the reassembled houses at their own pace; the 2024 gallery holds the farm machinery and tools. Allow time to enter the furnished interiors, which show how Comtois households lived between 1770 and 1950.

The museum uses geolocation stations that deliver augmented reality content without requiring visitors to download an app. This technology allows extra information and historical perspectives to appear directly at each building location.