Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Toulouse tobacco factory, built between 1888 and 1894 along the Brienne Canal, was initially a tobacco processing plant. It replaced older installations, including a first factory installed in 1810 in the former Benedictine convent, Place de la Daurade, after Napoleon I restored the tobacco monopoly. This industrial site became the second largest in France after Paris, employing up to 2,000 people, mostly women nicknamed "tabataires". Production, first manual, was mechanized between the two world wars, before the final closure in 1987.

Between 1821 and 1894, activities developed near the Bazacle to take advantage of hydraulic energy, before the current buildings were erected. The factory produced various tobacco derivatives (cigares, powders, lime) in specialized workshops, employing up to 70% of the staff in the cheque section. Working conditions were difficult: 12-hour days, low wages, and age disparities. Despite this, workers enjoyed certain privileges, such as booking half of the vacancies for the families of employees.

Production ceased in 1979 due to mechanization, the abolition of European customs and anti-smoking campaigns. Threatened by demolition, the buildings were rescued by a citizen association and classified as historical monuments in 1990. After restoration, they were transferred to Toulouse-I-Capitol University in 1996. Today, the site houses amphitheatres, a university library, and since 2021, Sciences-Po Toulouse, mixing industrial heritage and student life.

The buildings, characterized by their functional architecture (directorial building, fireplace of 1906, refectory of 1903), testify to the Toulouse industrial golden age. Their rehabilitation has helped preserve an emblematic place of local social history, where technical innovation, labour struggles and economic change were interspersed. The factory also embodies the transition from a craft economy to an industrial era, before becoming a symbol of successful heritage conversion.

The site retains a strong collective memory, notably through the term occitan "tabataïrés" referring to the workers. These women, paid to work and hired on a daily basis, formed a united community, as evidenced by strikes and the transmission of jobs within families. Their work, though poorly paid, was central to the Toulouse economy until the rise of aeronautics in 1914.

Today, the Manufacture des Tabacs combines heritage and modernity: its 6 amphitheatres, its library and its research laboratories make it a dynamic university centre. The site also hosts five student associations and two Sciences-Po laboratories, perpetuating its role as an exchange place, but this time intellectual and academic.

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