While France reaches temperature records, with 49 departments placed on red alert this Monday, June 22, certain air-conditioned municipal and metropolitan museums are opening free access to their collections.
In Lyon, access to three municipal museums is still free today. For three days, Lyon residents have been able to cool off in the air-conditioned rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts on Place des Terreaux, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Gadagne Museum in old Lyon. The town hall of Lyon is among the pioneers in the conversion of museums into shelters during heat waves, repeated in each heatwave episode since 2023. The free admission is due to end tomorrow, but it is possible that it will be extended due to the forecast temperatures.
Since yesterday, all museums in the municipality and the metropolis of Nantes have been free, until the end of the vigilance. This concerns the Nantes Arts Museum, the History Museum at the castle of the Dukes of Brittany, but also the Chronophage, the archeology museum in the town of Rezé on the outskirts of the city. Orléans follows the same policy. Following the announcement of the placement of its department on red alert on June 21, the Loiret prefecture set up free access to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum for Biodiversity and the Environment, and the Jeanne d’Arc Museum, reconstruction of the house of the “maid of Orléans”. La Rochelle includes its Natural History Museum in the cool spaces made accessible free of charge throughout the heatwave. In Nancy, entry to the Museum of Fine Arts and the Muséum-Aquarium is also free until June 24.
In Paris, museums are part of the “islands of freshness” identified by the City and the permanent collections are free as all year round: the Museum of Fine Arts at the Petit Palais, the Carnavalet Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris… In Marseille, museums are not among the places included in the heatwave plan put in place by the town hall, which has however announced free access to municipal swimming pools.
Some cities, such as Tours or Strasbourg, apply a reduced rate to museums. In Tours, the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts become free, while the Musée de Compagnonnage is accessible at half price, like the Museum of Fine Arts in Strasbourg.
Le Mans has chosen to adapt the opening hours of its cultural establishments: the Musée du Tessé and the Musée Jean-Claude Boulard – Carré Plantagenêt open an hour earlier and close an hour later, but the town hall warns of the possibility of total closure of the second.
Some municipalities are announcing the total or partial closure of their museums, which are not equipped for heatwave conditions, until temperatures drop again. This is the case in Angers, where only the Jean Lurçat Museum was able to remain open during the weekend. Likewise in Strasbourg, where the price reduction applied to the MBA is accompanied by the closure of part of its course. The Palais de Tokyo in Paris is also extending the closure of its exhibition spaces this Monday.
