Musée archéologique (Palais Rohan)

The Musée archéologique is housed in the lower level of the Palais Rohan at 2 Place du Château, beside the cathedral on Strasbourg's Grande Île, in the Grand Est region of France. It presents the archaeology of Alsace from the Paleolithic to the early Middle Ages, covering some 600,000 years of human presence on the Upper Rhine plain. The collection follows a chronological sequence through the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age, then the Gallo-Roman period with finds from Argentoratum, the Roman legionary camp that stood on the site of Strasbourg, and ends with the Merovingian era. Visitors see stone tools, ceramics, jewellery, weapons, funerary goods and sculpture, with burial finds and reconstructed grave assemblages. The Roman section includes inscriptions, altars, pottery and everyday objects from the camp and the civilian settlement, and the Merovingian cemeteries have provided jewellery and belt fittings of high quality. The museum takes a chronological approach, using display cases, reconstructions and maps to explain the settlement of the region and its contacts with the Celtic and Roman worlds. The vaulted spaces in the basement of the Baroque palace, built in 1732 to 1742 for the Rohan prince-bishops, form a setting of thick walls and low lighting suited to the collection. The palace was damaged in the Second World War and has been restored in stages, and the museum has been renewed since. It is one of three museums in the palace and part of the group of municipal museums of Strasbourg. It is closed on Tuesday and open other days from about 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, with admission of about €7.50 and free entry for visitors under 18. Because the displays cover such a long span of time, the museum offers a useful background for the Roman and medieval remains seen elsewhere in the old town, and it shows how the Rhine valley was a corridor for peoples, trade and ideas long before Strasbourg was founded as a city.