Musée de Villèle

About

The Villèle Historical Museum is one of the main museums on Réunion Island, French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. Located in the heights of Saint Paul in a place called Villèle, it is established in the old house Desbassayns, a vast colonial plantation where Madame Desbassayns lived (1755-1846), a great landowner and slave operator of the history of the island at the time when it was still called Bourbon and was a French colony. The collections of this establishment, managed by the department of La Réunion, include furniture as well as many objects from the everyday life of the past.

The visit includes the ancillary buildings, distributed in an area of more than ten hectares, the domain of Villèle, classified as historical monuments since December 2019. This includes a domestic chapel called the Pointue Chapel, the former slave hospital, the old kitchen and the remains of the sugar factory.