Welcome to the museum of French inland waterways, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, on the Seine river.

It is one of the most important French museums about the history of inland navigation around the country: traditional and industrial shipping, the Seine, the Loire and the Rhône rivers, etc.

Artifacts, loans from renowned national museums (musée de l’Armée, de la Marine, des Arts et métiers, des Arts et traditions populaires…) complete municipal collections.

More than 250 small-scale models of boats are exposed or kept in reserve: old or modern models, ex-voto, toys, industrial models, copies and scientific remakes, etc. Since 2005 the museum presents very large models of hydraulic buildings : locks, boats lifts… from the previous collection of the musée national des Travaux publics, closed in 1955 in Paris, and still in boxes ever since. From now on, the museum is able to answer the program fixed right from the start, to present “the inland boats and navigation in France, in every form, duration or aspect”. The public can discover this unknown universe, as well as trough drawings, paintings and engravings, in the specialized library, thousands of photographs, postcards, documents, old newspapers, reviews, etc.

There is also an important bookshop on these subjects. The association of the Friends of the museum publishes twice a year books called “cahiers du musée de la Batellerie” and presents 3 real boats on the Seine river, which can be visited some days during summertime.