This was one of the campaign promises of the new mayor of Tarbes, Pascal Claverie (various center): free admission for all the city’s municipal museums. Monday June 29, the proposal was adopted by the municipal council to come into force from July.
The measure concerns the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions of the Massey Museum, the main one in the city, the Museum of Deportation and Resistance, the Birthplace of Marshal Foch and the Carmel. According to Laure Bertrand, assistant in charge of culture interviewed by the JdA, this free service meets a dual objective: “increase attendance at museums” and “open culture to all Tarbes residents”. Additional offers, such as guided tours or workshops, remain subject to payment and their price remains unchanged.
According to Laure Bertrand: “this decision will not jeopardize the municipality’s budget”. The mayor indicated that ticket revenue amounts to around €25,000. In 2025, the Massey Museum welcomed nearly 13,000 visitors, a figure up 20% compared to 2024, specifies the culture assistant.
By removing museum fees at the municipal level, the town of Tarbes, which had 44,000 inhabitants in 2023, stands out in the Occitanie Museums network. If in Montpellier, the MO.CO. Panacée, the Pavillon Populaire and the Carré Sainte-Anne are free, visitors must pay an entrance ticket to enjoy the MO.CO Hôtel des collections and the Fabre Museum. In Toulouse, general free admission remains limited to the first Sunday of the month. In Nîmes, where museums currently remain chargeable, an extension of free admission has however just been voted for the start of the 2026 school year.
A showcase of the city’s identity, the Massey Museum preserves an important collection linked to the history of the hussars, a light cavalry corps of Hungarian origin, several regiments of which were garrisoned in Tarbes, from the 19th century. 17,000 objects chronologically retrace the “hussar phenomenon” by highlighting its link to the city as well as its international dimension. The museum also houses a Fine Arts collection, which includes works by Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955) and Henri Borde (1888-1959), a painter who lived in Tarbes until the end of his life. An archaeological collection made up of pieces from Bigorre, a historic county in the French Pyrenees and Gascony, completes the collections.
