[2] In 1835, upon the proposal of the mayor of Périgueux, the Museum of antiques and objets d'art's collection was transferred to the chapel of the White Penitents,[3] to the south of the cloister of the Saint-Front Cathedral.

[8] Michel Hardy, president of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord, succeeded Édouard Galy upon his death.

[9][10] In 1891, upon the consistent bequeath of the Marquis de Saint-Astier of over 150 paintings (Flemish, French and Italian, from the 16th to the 19th century), the city decided to buy the old Augustinian convent, where the collection of the archaeological museum of the Dordogne department is now exhibited, and the buildings around it to create a new structure.

Archaeological pieces from North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia), Greece, Italy, Oceania, and the Americas were later added to the museum's main collection.

[15] On the first floor are exhibited the collections of prehistory (fourth most important collection in France)[15] with numerous flint tools testifying to the human occupation in Périgord more than 400,000 years ago (Neanderthal fossil skeleton from the cave of Le Regourdou, Montignac, about 95,000 years old; a sapiens fossil skeleton, the so-called Chancelade man, about 12,000 years old; painted and carved blocks from the Blanchard des Roches shelter of the prehistoric site of Castel-Merle in Sergeac, 35,000 years old; stone with carved woman-figures from the prehistoric site of Termo-Pialat in Saint-Avit-Sénieur; the carved reindeer of Limeuil; a collection of Magdalenian bone carvings, including a carved rib from the Cro-Magnon shelter in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil and the bison bone pendant from the Raymonden shelter in Chancelade.

The setting was inspired by a romantic envisioning of the ruins, typical of the time of their discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In 1891, after the aforementioned substantial donation from the Marquis of Saint-Astier, the wing meant to host this section was built, then renovated in 2002 with an installation in which the colors of the walls of the rooms were linked to the chronological period of the works: yellow for the hall of the eighteenth century and green for the hall in the Empire style of the early nineteenth century, light gray or bluish gray for the rooms dedicated to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with progressively lighter colors.