This museum of fine arts and archaeology owes its existence to the generosity of a local patron, Antoine Vivenel (1799–1862), who assembled a significant collection reflecting his passion for antiquity and the Renaissance. As early as 1839, he donated his entire collection to his hometown and spared no expense in establishing a model institution, the Musée des Études, which housed over 4,000 works of art, a gallery of plaster casts and a free school for the teaching of the arts.
Housed since 1952 in the mansion bequeathed by Count René Personne de Songeons, the museum has been enriched by various donations as well as finds from local archaeological excavations. Spanning from prehistory to the 19th century, its collections bear witness to the richness of European and non-European cultures.

Drawn from the collections of the Antoine Vivenel Museum, a superb collection of religious sculptures from the medieval and Renaissance periods has been on display since 2012 in the renovated cloister of this former abbey.

The significant figurine collections of Alfred Ternisien and Arthur de Marsy, bequeathed to the City of Compiègne between 1901 and 1927, along with the immense diorama of the Battle of Waterloo created by Charles Laurent, led to the establishment of a museum dedicated to historical figurines in 1949.
Moved to the former Hôtel de la Cloche, the museum became, upon its reopening in 1984, the first museum of its kind dedicated to the world of historical figurines. It houses a collection of nearly 155,000 items, 45,000 of which are on display, offering a vast overview of the history of France and Europe.