Musee National de la Marine, Rochefort

Sweet museum with plenty of info. However Majority of info is in French and not English. Great history of marine ship culture

Visited here with my wife and two children (7yrs and 4yrs) when we had a day of bad weather. Struggled getting parked but eventually found a large car park in the centre of the town not too far away. The museum entrance fee includes entrance to the La Hermione and Musee Marine. The Hermione was very interesting, my two boys loved it. The ship itself is quite new however, it is built as a sea going replica so there are parts which are modern as per laws and regulations when building a new ship. You can only really see the first two decks, the rest is restricted as they are essentially crew quarters i believe. Most of the notices and information boards have english tranlsations. The museum itself is quite interesting though is mainly shipbuilders models of the ships that were built there. You can get an English audio tour when you go in which is good. However I feel the museum has missed an opportunity the present the history of this bygone era. There was limited information of how the dockyard ran and who worked there. I would have liked to have had more around the history of the building itself, such as who worked there, what were their roles, famous persons from history who used the building, what did the rooms originally look like, etc. Overall we enjoyed our visit and would recommend it to others, however I feel it only briefly touched on the history of the building and the area itself. I would suggest looking at Hartlepool Historic Quay to have an idea of what could have been included to give people a feel of it would have been like to live and breath in that era.