Photo: Uuetenava · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Musée de la Préhistoire finistérienne

Archaeological museum in Penmarc’h, founded in 1923, with prehistoric collections from Finistère; closed to the public since the late 2010s.

Temporarily closed

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Musée de la Préhistoire finistérienneTemporarily closed

Website

Temporarily closed. The museum has been closed to the public since the late 2010s for safety reasons and to meet regulations; its future has not yet been decided. A selection of objects can be viewed online on the “Préhistoires finistériennes” website.

About the museum

The Musée de la Préhistoire finistérienne was inaugurated on August 19, 1923, in Penmarc’h. It grew out of the many excavations carried out in the region at the turn of the 20th century and the wish to keep the department’s heritage remains on site. A civil company of archaeologists and enthusiasts, including the navigator Charles Bénard, the painter Georges Boisselier and Canon Jean-Marie Abgrall, bought the land in 1922 and had the building constructed.

A second room was opened a few years later, and the gardens were laid out as an open-air museum where several megalithic monuments were re-erected, including the bent passage grave of Run-Aour. Members of the society bequeathed their collections to the museum, and these were classified as Monuments historiques. The collections bring together thousands of objects from more than 200 sites excavated in the department: worked flint, ceramics, axes, daggers and Bronze Age and Iron Age finds, including discoveries from the necropolis of Saint-Urnel in Plomeur.

For decades, despite outdated museography, the museum remained a reference centre for the study of protohistory. It stayed open to the public until the late 2010s, then had to close for safety reasons and to meet regulations. Its future remains uncertain. In 2024 the DRAC Bretagne (the regional branch of the Ministry of Culture) published a virtual museum of the most representative objects.