THE COLLECTIONS

Discover

The château has exhibited the council museum's fantastic collections since 1912. The Horse Museum's collections were donated in the late 1950s to join the museum.

Saumur is a council museum with the Musée de France label. Its first class collections are incredibly diverse (decorative arts, fine arts, ethnology, archaeology, biology).

Its highlights are: ceramics (one of the best earthenware collections in France), tapestries (15th-18th century, most are listed as Monuments Historiques) and, it is Saumur after all, horse tack with antique pieces, engravings, veterinary and farrier equipment.

Christophe Gagneux

Christophe Gagneux

Christophe Gagneux

Christophe Gagneux

The so-called "abbey" still stands in the courtyard we now call Caserne Feuquières (in honour of Manassès de Pas de Feuquières, an officer who was born in Saumur in 1590, his aunt was Charlotte Arbaleste who was married to Duplessis-Mornay). The abbey is what's left of the château's Saint-Florent monastery abbey, founded in the 10th century. The benedictine brotherhood left the site soon after 1024 to move to what is now Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent.

Saint-Florent Abbey has faded from memory but it was one of the biggest in Western France between the 10th and 16th century.

The abbey's rooms are currently not open to visitors.

If you'd like to find out more about the items on display at the Château-Museum, you can view the list of Museum pieces (Joconde database by the French Ministry of Culture)