House of Fishing and Nature

The House of Fishing and Nature sits on the Île de la Jatte, a thin island in the Seine that once served as a primary muse for Impressionist painters like Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. While the island is remembered for its artistic history, the building itself represents a dedicated effort to document the living, breathing reality of the river today. It opened its doors in June 1993, transforming a site once occupied by abandoned industrial warehouses into a specialized center for aquatic education. The institution grew out of the Amicale des Pêcheurs de Neuilly Levallois and the Environs, an association founded in 1910 that remains one of the oldest fishing clubs in France. For decades, the association fought to protect the local waterways, eventually securing this space to house their headquarters, a fishing school, and a museum dedicated to the fish populations of the Seine. When the municipality redeveloped the island in the early 1990s, they replaced the crumbling factory ruins with this marble and glass facility, cementing the role of the island as a center for environmental stewardship.