Musée de la Résistance de Limoges

The Musée de la Résistance de Limoges (Limoges Museum of Resistance) presents the history of occupation, resistance, and deportation in the city of Limoges and the surrounding region during the Second World War.

Collections contain over 800 wartime artifacts include weapons, uniforms, and military equipment, documents, and posters, and are presented in both permanent displays and temporary exhibitions. The latter focus on specific wartime ideas from the Second World War and beyond, such as ‘Sport, Memory, and Defence’ and ‘Forgotten Heroes: Animals in the Great War’. The permanent display is roughly chronological from the war’s beginning to end and is spread across ten exhibition spaces, each of which presents a theme:

• ‘France Goes to War’: The prewar political, diplomatic, and cultural context, the decision to declare war, and the immediate effects of war upon the nation and Limoges.
• ‘A World Falls Apart’: The German offensive of May 1940 and French collapse, through military and political context, and the circumstances of armistice.
• ‘The New Order’: The birth of Vichy, and the principles and practicalities which created it.
• ‘Force in the Making: Beginnings of Resistance’: Initial efforts at and challenges to resistance in Limoges and the surrounding Haut-Vienne region.
• ‘Life Continues’: Civilian life in France and Limoges, under Vichy and German occupation; reactions and reprisals to acts resistance, and broader social ambivalence.
• ‘German City / French Resistance’: Reactions to the German occupation of the unoccupied zone in November 1942, life in Limoges under German occupation, and increased resistance.  
• ‘Liberation’: The liberation of Limoges and the region in 1944, and the role of the Resistance.
• ‘Repression’: Reprisals and punishments suffered by resistance members and civilians under German occupation.
• ‘Better Tomorrows’: Political change, debate, and hopes during resistance and in the aftermath of liberation.   
• ‘Memories’: Continuing efforts to remember, and the importance of historical memory of wartime resistance and deportation.

The museum is housed within a former convent, originally belonging to the Sisters of Providence from 1650 until 1792 and the Revolution. The building was later employed as military barracks, and beginning in 1883 was remodeled: space was divided into new floors and rooms that it maintains today. The museum was opened in 1989.