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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The former Collège Saint-Raymond, located in Toulouse near the Basilica Saint-Sernin, was founded in the 14th century to welcome poor students from the university. Reconstructed in 1523 by architect Louis Privat after a fire, it retains a southern Gothic brick style, typical of the area, with false machicolis and openings on the round path. The building served as a college until the Revolution, before being transformed into stables, barracks, and then presbytery in the 19th century.

From 1868, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc undertook a controversial restoration, adding a turret, interior walls and crenellated chimneys to accentuate its medieval appearance. He also built a neo-Gothic house in the old courtyard. In 1892, the city of Toulouse established the museum of Antiques, dedicated to archaeology, after saving it from demolition thanks to the intervention of Alexandre Du Mège, Prosper Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc himself.

The museum, inaugurated in 1892, initially presents "small Antiquities" (ethnographic objects, coins, furniture) before specializing in Roman and Paleo-Christian archaeology. The collections come from local excavations (village of Chiragan), donations (campana collection, bequest) and state deposits. In 1999, after excavations revealing a paleo-Christian necropolis of the fourth century, the museum reopens with a modern museography, highlighting its multi-series history.

The building, classified as a Historical Monument in 1975, illustrates the evolution of a medieval college in cultural space. Its transformations reflect the challenges of preserving the Toulouse heritage, between romantic restorations and archaeological rediscoveries. Today, it houses unique collections, such as the Roman busts of Chiragan, and remains a symbol of the transmission of knowledge, from university to museum.

The paleo-Christian necropolis, discovered in the 1990s, reveals sarcophagi and a lime oven of the Ve-VI century, testimonies of the ancient occupation of the site. The museum, reorganized by Émile Cartailhac and then Robert Mesert, becomes a reference point for the study of the Roman Tolosa and its medieval heritage, while preserving the memory of the students who lived there for five centuries.

Finally, the Collège Saint-Raymond embodies the 16th century Toulouse renaissance, marked by the use of brick and the influence of church patrons, such as Martin de Saint-André, Prior of the College. Its architecture, although modified by Viollet-le-Duc, remains a rare example of middle-age university colleges still standing in France.

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