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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Labenche Museum, officially named the Brive-la-Gaillarde Museum of Art and History, occupies the Labenche Hotel, a Renaissance building built around 1540 by Jean de Calvimont, Lord of La Labenche and Clerk of the King for Lower Limousin. This building, classified as a historic monument in 1886, illustrates Renaissance civil architecture in Limousin, with facades decorated with busts and pilasters windows. It was later enlarged, as evidenced by a pink stone pavilion, and houses a court of honor at the galleries in the middle of the hangar.

The hotel changed hands several times: from noble families (Calvimont, Dumas, Sabruguet-Damarzid) to Louis XIII, who stayed there during his visit to Brive. In 1829 he was acquired by the bishop of Tulle to establish a small seminary there, before being ceded to the city in 1906. Its Italian staircase and reception rooms, decorated with carved friezes evoking ancient fighting, reflect its past prestige.

The municipal museum was founded in 1879 by Ernest Rupin, president of the Scientific, Historical and Archaeological Society of the Corrèze, and originally installed in the former convent of the Clarisses. Its collections, from donations and excavations, cover 100,000 years of local history, with archaeological objects, 17th century English tapestries (including 10 unique pieces from the Royal Mortlake Manufacture), and naturalized specimens. Transferred to the Labenche Hotel in 1989 after restoration, it became a museum in France in 2002.

The museum is distinguished by its multidisciplinary vocations: archaeology (Prehistory in the modern era), fine arts (paintings, sculptures), ethnography (traditional tools, costumes), and natural sciences (herbers, mineralogy). Among his treasures are a piano belonging to Claude Debussy, accordions of the local brand Dedenis, and a numismatic collection of several thousand pieces, from Antiquity to the 20th century. The excavations carried out by his teams doubled the exhibits, bringing the total to 60,000 objects, of which 5,000 were visible.

The Labenche hotel, compared to buildings like the house of Armagnac in Rodez, embodies the Renaissance patronage in the province. Its decorations combine ancient influences (cariates, pediments) and local (busts of notables), while its history reflects the mutations of Brive: from seigneurial residence to knowledge (seminar, museum). Today, it combines heritage conservation and cultural mediation, with temporary exhibitions and a focus on regional history.

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