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Origin and history

The Hotel de Fleuriau is a private hotel built between 1740 and 1750 in La Rochelle, in a typical 18th century Parisian style, with a central body and two wings surrounding a courtyard. Originally commissioned by Jean Regnaud de Beaulieu, he was bought in 1772 by Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau, a trader enriched by his sugar cane plantations in Santo Domingo. Fleuriau enlarged the hotel around 1780 by adding a new building body open to a garden, connected to the existing structure by pierced doors on each floor. The building remained in the same family until 1974, when it was sold to the city of La Rochelle.

The museum of the New World, installed in the hotel since 1982, is the first in France to approach the niece past of a French port and slavery in the Antillean colonies. Its collections, composed of 2,200 works (paintings, maps, art objects), reflect the cultural and economic exchanges between La Rochelle and the Americas, particularly through the history of trafficking, explorations and abolitions. The hotel, partially classified as historical monuments in 1950 and 1951, also illustrates the civil architecture of the 18th century, with preserved interior decorations (woodworks, living rooms, wrought iron staircase).

The facade on garden and the interior lounges, decorated with woodwork and painted haze, have been protected since 1950. The museum offers a thematic route: discovery of the Americas on the ground floor, slave trade and West Indies on the first floor, New France and American independence on the first floor, and contemporary art on the last level. A space dedicated to families and audio guides complete the visit, highlighting the educational vocation of the place.

The Hotel de Fleuriau thus embodies both the architectural heritage of the Enlightenment century and the memory of transatlantic exchanges, including their darkest aspects. Its history is inseparable from that of Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau, whose fortune, built on slavery in Santo Domingo, allowed the building to be enlarged. Today owned by the commune, it has been labeled "Musée de France" since 2002 and remains a symbol of the complex links between France and the New World.

The protected elements include the garden façade, interior decorations (living rooms, woodwork, fireplaces), and the staircase with its wrought iron gate. The old part, in creamy moellon, contrasts with the posterior facade in cut stone, added by Fleuriau. This mix of styles reflects the successive changes of the hotel, marked by its residential and then museum use.

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