Lying about 2.5km southwest of the city centre, the French military base of Royallieu was used as a Nazi transit camp from 1941 to 1944; several of the original buildings have housed this profoundly moving memorial museum since 2008. Of the more than 53,000 men, women and children held here (mostly Jews, prisoners of war and Resistance fighters), 48,000 were marched through town to the train station for the trip east to concentration and extermination camps, including Auschwitz.
