Museum of Inland Navigation

France’s national museum of inland waterways and inland navigation was created in 1967 at the initiative of the journalist and politician Louise Weiss (1893-1983) with the curator François Beaudouin (1929-2013). It was renewed in 2015. The location is Le château du Prieuré, a priory later rebuilt as an industrialist’s mansion. Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the north-west part of the Paris conurbation, was a vital centre for river transport at the confluence of the Seine and the Oise. The museum is rich in high-quality scale-models, paintings and documents and includes important objects concerned with waterways engineering brought from the former Musée des Traveaux Publics. The ground floor shows some historical boats and a series of models to show the operation of locks, lifts and loading methods. The first floor explains the different regional types of vessels across France and the history of systems of propulsion on inland waterways. The museum also has a place to watch historical films, an archive and a library.