Musée de Royan, Municipal museum in Royan, France

The Musée de Royan occupies the former market hall of Pontaillac, a building rehabilitated in January 2004. Its central exhibition hall hosts temporary cultural exhibitions, while the permanent rooms present a chronological history of the city from antiquity to the Second World War and the architecture of the 1950s.

The museum succeeds the municipal museum created in 1885, first housed on the first floor of the Foncillon casino. Destroyed by the bombing of 5 January 1945, it lost most of its collections. Local scholars Louis Basalo and Robert Colle rebuilt it from finds made across the Royan area, and since January 2004 it occupies the former Pontaillac market halls.

The museum's cabinet of curiosities recreates the 1930 municipal museum, arranged in three sections: Artifecalia, Naturalia and Exotica. Its collections also hold five paintings by Fernand Pinal, including Royan vu de Vallières (1927) and L'église Saint-Pierre de Royan (1930), plus Charles Mercereau's Premiers baigneurs et cabines de bain à Foncillon vers 1860.

The museum occupies the former Pontaillac market halls, rehabilitated in January 2004, with a central hall for temporary exhibitions and sections arranged around it. The visit follows a chronological route through the collections, from archaeology to the 1950s. Temporary shows change in the central hall, so the displays seen vary between visits.

The cabinet of curiosities recreates the 1930 museum and is divided into three sections: Artifecalia, Naturalia and Exotica. It also holds a butterfly collection assembled by Fernand Braun, a name worth looking for in the display cases.