- Castle of the Dukes of Brittany

More than 800 exhibits drawn from the museum's own collections are on display. They have been chosen for their significance and their capacity to illustrate and explain the different historical themes.

The selection is extremely diverse: paintings, sculpture, relief maps, model ships, maps and plans, posters, engravings, photographs, films, tools, scientific instruments, furniture, objets d'art, archived documents, etc...

The Nantes History Museum has been created from the merger of six collections:

- the Museum of Decorative Arts, opened in 1924 in the Ducal residence, closed in 1972;

- the Museum of local Folk Art, founded by Joseph Stany Gauthier, curator from 1922 to 1969;

- the Salorges Museum, devoted to the port, industrial and commercial activities of Nantes.

Founded in 1923 by the Amieux brothers, it was given to the City of Nantes in 1934. The building which housed it was destroyed by bombing in 1943 and the museum moved to the Castle during the 1950s.

- the Museum of Nantes in Images, opened in 1927 and closed during the 1960s.

- the Colonial Museum at the Château du Grand Blottereau.

- the Museum of Religious Art, opened in 1933 in "La Psalette" near the Cathedral, closed in 1969.

This permanent collection holds more than 50,000 objects. Over 800 are on display.

Scientific analysis during the 1990s by the conservation team at the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany demonstrated the strong predominance of items of Nantes origin from the modern and contemporary periods, associated with the city's activities and its development in an estuary location.