CHAFROUD ARTBAT

The entrance faces the river and is across from the parking lot. For a pedestrian, the location is rather inconvenient: steep walk down from the city where all restaurants are located, and long walk from the train station. The temporary exhibit on science fiction was stellar, very well curated and explained, with a wide variety of modern and well known artists. I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibit. The permanent collection was a bit hit and miss. There is no clear direction, it's a large mess of interconnected rooms, so walking around is a bit confusing. But I believe they'd aware of this and intend to fix it. The rooms on old drawing styles were factual but not very interesting to me. The parts dedicated to Bretecher or other artists were very extensive but perhaps it'd be better to cover more artists instead of devoting so much space to just a handful of people. In any case, great place for comics, with some room for improvements.

For such a huge building, the exhibition spaces here are quite compact. Even so, the displays are great (if you like that kind of thing). I saw a special sci-fi exhibit in September 2025. It was great: representation from Victorian cartoons all the way through to contemporary work, all well lit and laid out. The big explanatory panels had English translations, which was helpful. The more permanent exhibits were equally good, showing sketches, large illustrations, black and white versions, panels with text balloons left empty, corrected panels, all revealing the process of making cartoons. Well-stocked bookshop, too. Recommended!

Comic Art Collection. Well designed and continues to be in development comic art museum and excellent comic art shop, well worth a visit if you have an interest in comics. Predominantly French comics.

I’ve been waiting to visit the Musée de la Bande Dessinée since it moved into its new home a few years ago. I’d visited its old location in the CIBDI many times over the years when visiting the Angoulême comics festival, but I hadn’t been for about 18 years and so had missed out on the new building. Well, finally I made it this year and it was worth the wait. The permanent exhibition on the history of the comics art form was immaculately presented and features a mix of rare original art and reproductions as well as printed copies of comics and artifacts. There’s interactivity in the form of video presentations dotted about and I highly recommend the audio presentation that you can download as a podcast from iTunes (in a number of languages). At the time of writing, there are three temporary exhibitions as well—the comics from around the time of the May ‘68 riots (the beginnings of the comics for adults movement in France), a look at the work of René Goscinny in the movies (featuring the many adaptations of Astérix, Lucky Luke et al. ), and a marvellous exhibition on the new wave of Arab comics that simply blew me away with the breadth of fantastic work that’s being created in the Middle East, both in print and online. The visit wouldn’t be complete without visiting the museum’s bookshop. I’d heard good things about it but if you’re a comics fan, you’ll feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven. Simply put, it’s one of the best comics shops you’ll find anywhere (they do mail order too). In short, if you’re in the area, and you have the slightest interest in comics, you really need to visit. Actually, even if you’re not into comics, it’s well worth going along. You’ll learn lots and who knows? It may just make you a believer in the power of comics after all!

Interesting museum, but I hoped for better. There seemed to be some very notable absences. The visit wasn't very well organized (but I believe that they're working on it). It would have been cool to have a timeline of famous and underground comics as well as a section devoted to the yearly Festival de la BD winners with a write up on each one.

Amazing museum and book store! It was so amazing seeing the contribution of French artists to the world of illustration.

It’s convenient to reach from the center ville by feet. The museum was not crowded in February and I spent 2 hours enjoying there!

A lovely museum. Interesting books and art work on the history of french food. Well worth a visit if you’re in the area.