East India Company's Museum

A unique museum of art and history in an exceptional setting

Since 1984, the musée de la Compagnie des Indes (East India Company's museum) has been housed in one of the buildings oft he Citadel of Port-Louis, which is a marvel of the XVIIth century military architecture that was initiated by the Spanish and completed by architect Jacques Corbineau.

The musée de la Compagnie desIndes is the one and only museum in France to deal with this theme. It brings back to visitors the exceptional story of great trading companies during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries.

Vessel models, engravings, oldmaps, indoeuropean furniture, China porcelains, Indian cottons : all these artefacts are the testimony of this amazing maritime epic. The quest for precious goods led the Company's crews and employees to African, Oriental and American coasts after some long and perilous voyages. The names of the trading posts that had been built still are the echoes of this adventurous past : Ouiddah, Pondicherry, Chandernagore, Pegu, Guangzhou.

As you walk the museum rooms

From Lorient to Guangzhou, the display evokes the shippings of the East India Company ships. Furthermore, the display allows us to admire the precious goods that appealed to the Europeans so much, all this in the atmosphere of the African and Asian trading post