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Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) is a national museum inaugurated on 7 June 2013 in Marseille by President François Hollande, within the framework of Marseille, the European capital of culture. This project is part of the continuation of the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions (MNATP), closed in 2005, whose collections were transferred to Marseille. The Mucem is designed as a society museum dedicated to cultural anthropology of European and Mediterranean societies, with a multidisciplinary approach combining archaeology, history, art history and contemporary art.

The Mucem consists of three main sites: Building J4, designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti, Fort Saint-Jean (classified as a historical monument) and the Conservation and Resource Centre (CRC) located in the Belle de Mai district. J4, a 72-metre-long cube, houses permanent and temporary exhibitions, while Fort Saint-Jean, a former military site, hosts cultural events and thematic gardens. A 130-metre bridge connects these two sites, symbolizing the link between historical heritage and contemporary creation.

The Mucem collections come mainly from the MNATP and the Museum of Man, totalling about one million items (objects, prints, photographs, sound archives). The museum highlights various themes, ranging from French rural traditions to urban and Mediterranean cultures. Since its opening, the Mucem has welcomed millions of visitors, becoming a symbol of the cultural attractiveness of Marseille and its region. In 2015, he received the Council of Europe Museum Award.

The history of the Mucem dates back to the Museum of Ethnography of the Trocadéro (1878), transformed into MNATP in 1941 under the impulse of Georges Henri Rivière. In the 1990s, in the face of the decline in MNATP traffic in Paris, the relocation project in Marseille was launched as part of the urban renewal of the Euro-Mediterranean. The choice of Marseille, a Mediterranean city par excellence, allows the museum to refocus its missions on the cultural and historical exchanges of this region.

Mucem also plays an educational and scientific role, with the Mediterranean Heritage Trades Institute (I2MP), created in partnership with the National Heritage Institute. The latter offers professional training and meetings, strengthening the link between academic research and museum practices. The museum thus establishes itself as a major player in the dissemination of knowledge on Mediterranean civilizations, while participating in the economic and cultural revitalization of Marseilles.

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