France Guide
Alsace and Lorraine
Musée Historique
Opening time: Sept– June Tues– Fri noon–6pm, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm; July & Aug daily except Mon 10am–6pm; closed public hols
Price: €4
Past the picturesque place du Marché-aux-Cochons-de-Lait is the much refurbished Musée Historique. Interactive exhibits guide you through Strasbourg's political and social history, as a prosperous free city of the Holy Roman Empire, through the theological controversies of the Reformation to French annexation by Louis XIV and the revolutionary fervour of 1789. The prize exhibit is an enormous 3D relief map of the city, commissioned in the 1720s to show the state of the city's fortifications. Across the river, in a typically Alsatian house on quai St-Nicolas, the Musée Alsacien (Mon & Wed– Fri noon–6pm, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm; closed public hols; €4) contains elaborately painted furniture and other quaint local artefacts.