Musée d’Histoire Naturelle – Right Wing of Palais Longchamp

Housed in the right wing of the Palais Longchamp, the Natural History Museum of Marseille is one of the city’s oldest museums, founded in 1819. It preserves a vast collection of more than 600,000 specimens, covering a wide range of fields: zoology, paleontology, botany, prehistory, and mineralogy. Only a small selection of these items is displayed in the exhibition halls.

The permanent collection is organized around four main themes:

• Safari, showcasing the wildlife of the five continents,
• Provence, dedicated to local species,
• Osteology, with its impressive skeletons,
• Prehistory – Evolution, retracing the history of life on Earth.

Designed above all for a younger audience, the museum takes a pedagogical approach with simple texts, straightforward displays, and an accessible tone—making it an ideal destination for a family outing.

Despite the majestic setting of the Palais Longchamp, the museum’s interior retains a fairly traditional museography. The visit is pleasant and informative, but it may lack a certain spark or striking feature—that little “wow factor” that surprises or amazes, especially for those who have experienced more modern or immersive natural history museums elsewhere.

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