Musée de la batellerie, River navigation museum in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France

The Musée de la batellerie occupies the Château du Prieuré above Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a long stone building with a steep slate roof, dormers and a round tower with a domed cupola. Its five exhibition spaces cover river shipping from the 17th to the 20th century, with models, dioramas, lock mechanisms and an open courtyard holding boats and shipyard tools.

The museum was created in 1965 on the initiative of Louise Weiss and entrusted to François Beaudouin, a nautical archaeologist who served as curator until his retirement in 1994, when Laurent Roblin succeeded him. Beaudouin kept the title of honorary curator until his death in 2013. In 2015, after several months of work, mayor Laurent Brosse inaugurated a new, more modern museography during the 56th Pardon national de la batellerie.

The museum is a leading participant in the Pardon national de la batellerie, a river-shipping festival held in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine each June, created five years before the museum itself. Its displays include dioramas of ports such as those on the Adour and Dordogne and the arrival of the coche d'eau in Paris in the late 18th century.

The museum has a documentation center for researchers and offers learning programs for school groups. Most visitors should allow time to explore the vessels and exhibition spaces.

The Jacques, a former tugboat over a century old, is listed as a monument historique, but its steam engine is kept at the Musée de la batellerie in Poses. The Triton 25, built in 1954 and converted into a pusher in the early 1960s, is operational and can be visited in full on certain occasions. Both boats belong to the Association des Amis du Musée de la Batellerie and usually lie moored below the museum.