Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Toulon Museum of Natural History came into being in 1882 when architect Gaudensi Allar built a museum building, art museum and library in downtown Toulon. Inaugurated on 29 April 1888, he then occupied the ground floor of the building. Despite the permanent absence of a curator, the Société d'histoire naturel de Toulon (future SSNATV) managed the collections, notably under the leadership of Léon Pourcel, the first curator (1906-1936) and founder of the company in 1909.

After Pourcel's death, SSNATV appointed delegates to preserve the collections, such as Paul Royer (1938) or Paul Georgeot (1945-1965), who restored and then directed the Museum. In 1966, Jean-Pierre Risterucci, paleontologist, became curator until 2001, enriching the collections of Conidae. His successor, Philippe Orsini (2001-2012), is conducting a modernization project leading to the opening of the Departmental Museum in the Las Garden on 21 June 2011, with 2,000 specimens exposed over 600 m2.

The Museum presents various disciplines: entomology, botany, malacology, ornithology, mammology, mineralogy and paleontology. The focus is on regional wildlife, Cape Garonne minerals and the paleoenvironment of Canjuers. The garden also houses geological space and urban biodiversity (birds, bats, insects). This site, formerly Burnett Park, was acquired by the Var Department as a sensitive natural space open to the public in 2000, before hosting the Museum in 2011.

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