Amphora and container, 2000 years of maritime trade

The extraordinary adventure of the merchant marine in France

 with its 12,840 km of coastline and 11 million square kilometers of sea surface is the second largest maritime domain after the United States. Nearly 360 million tons of goods pass every year through the major French ports: Marseille, Le Havre, Dunkirk, Nantes, Rouen or Bordeaux. 

Traditionally, Westerners have developed trade with the territories they discovered and provided them rare or unknown products.Thus, raw materials, manufactured goods and food, often took the sea.

On 1000 m², the exhibition offers an interactive and fun course with thread in the concrete examples of trade routes and cargoes of food products: cereals, olive oil, salt and spices, coffee, tea and cocoa , wine, exotic fruits. For each period in the history of maritime trade an animated film will interact with objects and trace a journey.