The Insect and Shell halls permanently closed their doors on 18 April 2017. You can still take a virtual look inside the halls thanks to Google Street View (click on the yellow guy down on the right, then select the third floor in the upper banner). You can also get in with Google Maps (drag the yellow guy onto the Institute, then select the third floor in the column on the right).

This hall contains over a thousand species of shells and molluscs! And this represents only a fraction of our collection which, with nearly nine million specimens, is one of the biggest mollusc collections in the world!

Laid out with impressive models and instructive illustrations, the Shell Hall also houses a tropical aquarium heated to 26 °C all year round, along with displays of sponges, corals, starfish, urchins and other invertebrates, a few live specimens of which can be seen in the aquarium.r