Réau · Seine-et-Marne
Safran Aeronautics and Space Museum
French name: Musée aéronautique et spatial Safran
Free admission
- Always freeFree every day
Address
Rond-point René Ravaud, 77550 Réau
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Opening hours
Wed 09:00-12:00, 14:00-17:00
The Safran aeronautics and space museum occupies the Saint-Chamas hangar, a vast steel shed originally built to house seaplanes on the shore of the Étang de Berre, dismantled in 1947 and re-erected on the Villaroche industrial site just outside Melun. Snecma long kept its flight-test prototype aircraft there. The museum's story begins in 1985, when three of the company's managers started a workshop to restore historic engines with some thirty volunteers drawn from the staff; it opened in 1989 and is still run today by the Association des Amis du Musée Safran. The collection covers a century of aero engines, from the Gnome and Le Rhône rotaries of aviation's pioneers to contemporary civil and military turbofans, alongside a set of Gnome et Rhône motorcycles that can be seen nowhere else in France. Since October 2014 a gallery created in the western extension has added a space section: launcher engines, satellite propulsion, scale models, with a simplified route designed for children. Admission is free for everyone, but the opening slots are few: Wednesday morning and afternoon, plus two Saturday afternoons a month, the second and the last. Outside those times groups of at least ten people are received by appointment through the association. The museum stands at the Rond-point René Ravaud, at the entrance to the Villaroche site, in the commune of Réau.
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