After being installed for 50 years in the Hôtel de Varennes, a medieval building remodeled in the 18th century on Place de Pétrarque in Montpellier, the municipal museum of Old Montpellier will move from January 2025 to the former departmental archives building, located 2 avenue de Castelnau in the fine arts district of Montpellier. It is expected to reopen in its new location in 2028.
The Hôtel de Varennes, registered as a historic monument in 1944 and 2018, was acquired by the city during the Second Empire. After a restoration campaign in 1965, the municipal museum moved there in 1975. Since then, part of the collections of the Fabre Museum in Montpellier have been exhibited there, as well as works from other establishments which have deposits there: engravings, objects of art and furniture, medals and coins.
The city museum will now swap its cross-ribbed vaulted ceilings and exposed beams for a more recent building dating from 1975. The old Montpellier museum will only take up part of the ground floor of the old archives building with eight floors and 8,300 m2. The city acquired this building which formerly housed the departmental archives from the Hérault council in 2013 for 4.7 million euros. The building renovation projects, estimated at 20 million euros, include its asbestos removal, the installation of efficient air conditioning and ventilation, the strengthening of thermal insulation, the replacement of joinery, the creation of a system of centralized technical management to regulate temperatures and humidity, as well as the installation of 700 m² of photovoltaic panels. The provisional schedule for the operation provides for work to start in the summer of 2026 for delivery at the end of 2027.
This renovation project took a long time to mature (the town hall purchased this new building in 2013) due to squatting on the premises awaiting work. The city had started an eviction procedure until it recovered its premises again in 2021. Following this, the town hall hesitated on several projects, notably school ones, to finally return to its initial project: the creation of a place for municipal and metropolitan archives, because these archives needed a suitable place of conservation. She then expanded her project to a broader approach: the creation of a place of memory for the city including a museum, an archive and research rooms.
This project also aims to save the old Montpellier museum, due to the poor conservation conditions of the Hôtel de Varennes and the difficult accessibility of the premises. The collections of the Musée du Vieux Montpellier will thus benefit from better conservation conditions in the former departmental archives building, thanks to a renovation that complies with current standards.
