In Chalon-sur-Saône, in Burgundy, the soldiers left their barracks following the dissolution of the 1st Marine Artillery Regiment. The mayor, Benoist Apparu, who wanted to reaffirm the identity of the city focused on the performing arts, decided to rehabilitate the old Chanzy-Forgeot barracks to turn it into a circus museum. “We were a military capital, we have the ambition to be a Circassian capital while remaining an administrative capital”proclaimed in October 2023 Augustin Delavenne, first deputy.
90 applications were selected, including 25 international architectural firms. In July 2025, the city will announce the name of the selected architectural firm. The opening is planned for 2028.
Since 2015, the three long buildings of the old barracks, built between 1873 and 1887, have undergone major rehabilitation work. The city acquired the premises from the Ministry of the Interior for a symbolic euro. The National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, the National Agency for Traveler Data dependent on the Ministry of the Interior and the General Directorate of Public Finances gradually set up there, soon followed by agents of the City and Chalon Agglo .
The circus museum is the next to move in. While there was talk of installing it in one of the barracks buildings for a time, the city ultimately opted for the construction of a new building on the site. The cost of the work amounts to 32 million euros financed by the city and several institutional partners.
If the nature of the new building has not yet been revealed, we know the contents. In 2023, the Chalon collections hosted more than 800 pieces relating to the circus, the first 600 or so of which were those of Nathalie Chabrier (born in 1932). This artist worked part of her life with the national circus Knie in Lausanne, and 200 pieces from the Parisian circus Medrano will also join the reserves.
It is also a question of making the exhibition route lively: “the visitor will discover a painting, a sculpture, or a poster, there must also be the opportunity in his visit to attend a microshow, a sketch, a rehearsal… To have something much more lively , less static, in the museum tour » the mayor told the newspaper L’Union.
This project is important for revitalizing a city affected by the dissolution of the 1st artillery regiment which led to the elimination of 960 positions in the city with a strong economic impact. During the territorial reform, Chalon also lost its status as capital of Champagne-Ardenne, leading to the loss of a thousand civil servants. The desire to highlight the circus spirit can be explained by the already established presence in Chalon of the National Center for Circus Arts (Cnac), one of the three major schools worldwide in this discipline, as well as by the festival Furies, which is partly a circus festival, and by the national circus center (Palc). “The idea is to complete the ecosystem”says the mayor.
