This 18th century mansion that now houses the New World Museum’s collections comprised two houses bought within a few years by Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau who joined them together with significant work in 1780.

Aimé-Benjamin and his wife Marie-Anne-Suzanne Liège belonged to the wealthy families of shipowners and traders, their fortune came from maritime trade and to the product of their plantations in Santo Domingo. They played an active and generous role in the Protestant community when it reconstituted itself in the second half of the 18^th century. But La Rochelle mainly remembers their son Louis-Benjamin Liège as a scientist and a man of property who created the museum of natural history and was known for his inexhaustible generosity. He would say: ‘fortune needs to be forgiven through ardent and enlightened charity’.