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Origin and history

The Sandelin Hotel Museum is a municipal museum in Saint-Omer, located since 1904 in an 18th century mansion. This building, built between 1766 and 1777 for Marie-Josèphe Sandelin, Viscounte de Fruges, replaces a former governor's hotel. The architecture, Louis XV style, is distinguished by its stone facades and its rock carved decorations. Part of the building was classified as a historic monument in 1955, the rest of which was registered in 1957.

Marie-Josèphe Sandelin (1733-1808), from a Flemish noble family, bought the land in 1766 after the death of her second husband, Pierre Sandelin. Without descendants, the hotel passed to his brother and then to his nephew before being acquired by the city in 1899. Requisitioned during the Revolution, he was restored after his return from exile to Spain in 1800. The architect remains unknown, but the building illustrates the Parisian model of the hotel "between courtyard and garden".

Founded in 1829 by the Société d'agriculture de Saint-Omer, the museum enriched in the 19th century various collections: paintings (François Boucher, Boilly, Brueghel), faiences, ceramics of Saint-Omer, and a numismatic collection of 16,000 coins. Donations, such as those of the Baroness of Teil-Chaix d'Est-Ange (1921 and 1933), marked her history. The museum is divided into two routes: one dedicated to local history (Audomarois), the other to the art of living of the 18th century elites.

The basement exhibits archaeological remains and models, while the ground floor exhibits paintings from the 16th–15th centuries in period rooms. The first floor houses a collection of 4,000 pieces of ceramic, including earthenware from Rouen and Delft. Among the flagship works are The Justice and Divine Vengeance of Prudshon and fragments of Abbé Filaster's tomb by Andrea della Robbia. The museum, labeled "Musée de France", remains a major testimony of regional artistic and historical heritage.

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