Musée Terra Amata

Musée Terra Amata in Nice is a museum of prehistory built on the site it protects. Geologists noticed the spot in 1958, and Henry de Lumley led the major excavations there in 1966. The digs uncovered evidence of human habitation on an ancient beach, occupied between 400,000 and 380,000 years ago. The city reserved the ground floor of the new residential building for the finds. When the museum opened in 1976, it was the first site museum of prehistory in France.

Acheulean tools fill the cases: bifaces, choppers and other stone implements from the original digs. Bones of wild boar, deer, an ancient rhinoceros and an ancient elephant lie beside them. Dioramas around the galleries sketch how daily life at the camp might have looked. The largest single exhibit is a sixty-square-metre cast of the original archaeological layer, the DM floor. Altogether 352 pieces are on display, while some 120,000 objects wait in storage.

A 2016 redesign added screens showing footage of the 1966 excavations, plus 3D models of the artefacts. There is a viewing area into the reserves as well, so you can watch how the collections are kept and studied. Raymond Moretti's monumental sculpture traces fourteen stages in the history of life and humanity. The drama of the 1966 digs changed French archaeology, prompting protective laws that matured into preventive archaeology and INRAP in 2002. Temporary exhibitions and monthly talks fill the mediation room, and workshops with a free quiz app serve younger visitors. The milk tooth from Homo heidelbergensis, about 380,000 years old, ranks among the oldest human remains in France.