Museum of Dolls and Antique Toys

The Museum of the Doll and the Antique Toy

The Guérande audio-guided tour evokes, before this building, the Museum of the Doll and the Antique Toy, which housed until 2017 one of the last collections of dolls of this kind in France.

The collection saved by Lucien Mahé

The museum was created thanks to Lucien Mahé, former president of the tourist office. In 1998, he founded an association to save an exceptional collection of antique dolls threatened with dispersal, and opened the museum on 13 July of the same year. More than three hundred dolls were presented there, veritable works of art requiring the know-how of numerous craftsmen, from sculptors to seamstresses. Installed in settings faithful to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, they evoked Parisian salons, articulated babies and delicate mignonnettes, all dressed in their original clothes.

What there is to see

The museum closed definitively in 2017, for safety reasons following a fire in neighbouring buildings, and its collection has since been dispersed. For twenty years, it had welcomed up to fifteen thousand visitors a year, amazed by its dolls, its miniature furniture, its porcelain tea sets and its period children's clothes. The building keeps the memory of this singular place; it can be discovered today from the street, along the walk.

Practical information

The building that housed the Museum of the Doll and the Antique Toy is in the medieval city of Guérande. As the museum closed in 2017, it can no longer be visited; the building can be contemplated from the street, on the level, along the walk.

Is the Doll Museum still open?

No, it closed definitively in 2017 for safety reasons, and its collection has been dispersed.

Who created the Doll Museum of Guérande?

Lucien Mahé, former president of the tourist office, who opened the museum in 1998 to save a collection of antique dolls.