[3] Initially, the museum shared the premises of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux,[4] in a building designed by Charles Burguet.

[6] Then, on January 9, 1987, the museum moved into the premises of the former Faculty of Letters and Sciences,[7] a building built in the 1880s by the municipal architect Charles Durand[8] and located in place of the former convents of the Feuillants and the Visitation.

5,000 pieces of art from Africa and Oceania also testify to the harbor history of the city.

On the ground floor are pieces on Prehistory, Protohistory, Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and the Modern Era.

[13] In 2009, the Aquitaine Museum opened new permanent rooms dedicated to the role of Bordeaux in the slave trade.