Photo : Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Le Musée De L'Ardenne
The Musée de l'Ardenne, at 31 Place Ducale in Charleville-Mézières, is a museum of art, history and archaeology with the 'Musée de France' label. Founded in 1959 as an ethnographic association collection, it opened in its present form in 1994.
Its collections tell the story of the Ardennes since Antiquity: Roman and Merovingian remains and objects linked to metalworking, from Gallic smiths to gunsmiths and the nail makers of the Semois. It holds arms from the royal manufactory of Charleville, a 1756 hospital pharmacy with its ceramic jars, about 3,000 coins, 19th-century regional paintings, a reconstructed Ardennes interior and two relief maps of Mézières (1614) and Charleville (1637). The mechanism of the Great Puppeteer can be seen behind glass, and a permanent exhibition is devoted to puppets.
The building combines 17th-century classicism with contemporary glass and steel architecture, and an inner garden links the Place Winston-Churchill to the Place Ducale.
