Corderie Royale

[1] Since 1986, the part open to visitors has permanent and temporary exhibitions dedicated to the maritime world and the history of the Arsenal de Rochefort.

He searched the coast for a site to replace this silt port and proposed to his cousin, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to install a new one in Rochefort, at the mouth of the Charente.

Located on the edge of the Charente, on a ground made up of a layer of mud nearly thirty meters deep, sometimes flooded with about sixty centimeters of water at high tides.

The building will then be designed to house several institutions: On the date of 10 September 1926, it was decided to close the Rochefort arsenal, with the consequent gradual abandonment of the Corderie.

In 1964, Admiral Maurice Dupont [fr] oversaw the clean-up of the site by military members, and in 1967, the building was declared a historic monument.

The building, whose restoration work was begun in 1976 and completed in 1988, made it possible to give the city the "National Grand Heritage Prize".

Today, this imposing building houses important administrative and tertiary services: The site of the Corderie Royal is decorated with a large park on the edge of the Charente River.

This pleasant park of contemporary creation, inaugurated in 1991 and referred to as jardin des Retours (Garden of Returns),[9] was created to enhance the site of the Corderie Royal.

This vast garden of rare plants, which stretches over an 18-hectare tree-lined area, has been landscaped as a theatre of greenery, imagined as an introduction to botanical art, and forms a walking space all around the Corderie Royal.

[10] In 2017, on the occasion of the 50 anniversary of the Royal Ropery as a historic Monument, the International Centre of the Sea undertook major works to renovate its permanent exhibition.