Musée du Nouveau-Monde

La Rochelle was a major slave port, and its Musée du Nouveau Monde (Museum of the New World) is a site of memory of slavery. The museum was opened in 1982 by Michel Crépeau, Mayor of La Rochelle. It is installed in the Fleuriau hotel, an eighteenth century mansion which bears the name of the shipowner Aimé-Benjamin de Fleuriau (1709-1787). The various collections recount the links between the Old Continent and the New World. In 2006, the Museum of the New World partnered with the National Day of Commemoration of the abolition of slavery in France, held every 10th of May, and installed a plaque at the museum entrance, explaining the history of the building and its connection to slavery.