Musée des Confluences de la Résistance

The Musée des Confluences de la Résistance in Blois documents the French Resistance networks that operated in the Loir-et-Cher department during the German occupation of France between 1940 and 1944. Located at 4 Rue du Colombier in the centre of Blois, the Loir-et-Cher prefecture, the museum takes its name from the geographic and symbolic convergence of clandestine networks across a department whose position straddling the Loire River made it a crossing point between the German-occupied zone in the north and the Vichy-administered free zone in the south until the full occupation of November 1942. The permanent collection is built around first-person testimonies, archival documents, period photographs, and objects associated with Resistance members and collaborators active in the region. Exhibits trace the early formation of underground cells in Blois and Vendôme, the development of escape-line operations that moved Allied airmen and Jewish families through the department toward safer territory, and the increasingly coordinated sabotage campaigns targeting rail infrastructure and German communications as the Liberation of 1944 approached. A dedicated section covers the deportation of Jewish residents from the Loir-et-Cher, drawing on municipal records and survivor testimonies to document how local administrative structures participated in the mechanisms of persecution. The museum does not avoid the ambiguities of wartime conduct, giving space to evidence of both active resistance and passive accommodation among the local population. The Liberation section documents the violent events of August 1944, when Blois sustained damage during the German withdrawal and the arrival of Allied columns. The museum's approach foregrounds the civilian dimension of the Resistance — documenting teachers, farmers, clergy, and tradespeople who ran networks alongside more formally organised résistants — and it is affiliated with regional educational programmes, hosting school groups regularly throughout the academic year. Temporary exhibitions are mounted periodically to mark wartime anniversaries or present new research on the occupation period in Centre-Val de Loire. Admission is €4, with reductions for students and young visitors.