Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord

Museum of the Périgord

The Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord Is the oldest of the Department of the Dordogne, it presents more than 45 000 works distributed on 2000m ² revolves around 4 large collections, you will also discover various temporary exhibitions

Prehistoric Collection

Rich in 18 500 references, the prehistory collection is the subject of regular academic research.

This 1st public collection formed in the Dordogne is the 4th of France after that of the museums of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the National Museum of Prehistory of Les Eyzies (of which it is complementary) and the Departmental Museum of Prehistory of Nemours.

A choice among the major pieces of this collection was therefore made for an attractive, pedagogical and didactic presentation. Tools, objects of art, and fossil men are exposed by site and by period in order to grasp the fundamental landmarks of history.

Medieval Collections: 4th-15th century

The medieval collections appeared very early in the museum's inventories. These are remarkable pieces from the disappeared buildings of Périgueux and Dordogne, which have been added, over time, to pieces found during excavations or offered by collectors.

Fine Arts Collections from the sixteenth to the 21st century

Exhibited in the cloister, for the architectural elements, – built for this purpose by the 19th century architect – and in the right wing, the works are presented chronologically.
For each room, colorful backgrounds recall the century to which it refers: blue for the 16th-17th centuries, yellow to evoke the Ors of the eighteenth century, green in reference to the green nineteenth century, light grey for the nineteenth-twentieth room to get closer to the white , so characteristic of the presentations of the late twentieth century.

The works exhibited testify to the history of artistic creation in Périgord, France and Europe. These collections were made up of purchases from the city, donations from many collectors in the region, loans and donations from the state.

They give fundamental milestones in the fields of painting, sculpture, furniture and art objects...

Non-European Collections

This collection, consisting of more than 2000 pieces, is considered today as the 7th of France. The first pieces of New Caledonia, Marquesas, Guyana and Asia were offered to the museum in the years 1860. They were reported by missionaries, civil servants, merchants and travellers from Périgueux and Périgord.

Acquired, initially, to be compared with the objects derived from the excavations of the prehistoric sites and presented against them, they were, since the sixties, exposed to evoke the cultures to which they belong.

Within these cultures, objects play a fundamental spiritual and social role: intermediaries between the visible and invisible world, embodying the spirit of the ancestors and the magical powers, they translate and reveal some of the founding myths of These civilizations.