Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Dauphin Museum was founded in 1906 by Hippolyte Müller, inspired by the Arlaten Museum of Arles, created by Frédéric Mistral in 1899. Originally housed in the chapel of the convent of the visitandines of Sainte-Marie d'en-Bas, a 17th-century building located in the Très-Cloître district, Müller collects objects threatened by the Industrial Revolution. This project is part of a desire to preserve the traces of the traditional Dauphinian lifestyles, then in the midst of a transformation.

In the 1960s, the collections were transferred to the former convent of Sainte-Marie, a larger site. The museum was inaugurated in February 1968 by André Malraux, Minister of Culture, on the occasion of the Grenoble Olympic Games. This period marks a turning point: permanent exhibitions are dismantled in the 1970s to allow for temporary exhibitions, releasing 3,500 m2 dedicated to renewed presentations.

Starting in the 1980s, the Dauphin Museum affirmed itself as a museum of society, exploring various themes: alpine memory, ethnology, archaeology, or industrial history. It becomes a multidisciplinary place, hosting institutions such as the Alpine and Rhodanian Centre of Ethnology or the magazine L-Alpe. Its collections, rich in more than 100,000 objects — from prehistory to agricultural traditions — bear witness to the cultural and historical diversity of Dauphiné.

The site itself, classified as a historical monument, combines architectural heritage (a 17th century Baroque chapel) and scientific. The convent of Sainte-Marie d'en-Haut, where the museum is now installed, embodies both a religious heritage and a space dedicated to the conservation, research and dissemination of the Dauphin heritage.

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