La maison aux cent fenêtres

I am de Rodriguez this weekend (see digitaldaze's blip and this film). S has gone to Vic to give a talk at a conference about transhumance (real live sheep will be present). It's the Journées du Patrimoine this weekend, when various historical buildings are open to the public, usually free, and/or have special events.

So I had a look at the programme and found that the Maison des Mémoires in Carcassonne was having a "theatralised tour" to celebrate the opening of a new exhibition called La maison aux cent fenêtres, celebrating the history of the building in which it is housed. I think it really does have a hundred windows, or not far off it -- a few of them in the extra of one of the internal courtyards. Built in the 17th century, it was originally a single family's home, but after the revolution it was gradually split up and many families lived in it -- sometimes 40 or 50 people.

It was a collaborative project between the departmental archives and a couple of associations. It took a lot of digging to find names of inhabitants and then find out more about them. The exhibition design, in the form of large information panels on the walls, was done by students of design at a local FE college, and they did an extremely good job.

We were guided round part of the building by an actress who initially played the role of a housemaid, but later took on a variety of identities, including the building's most famous resident, poet Joë Bousquet (blip) He was paralysed by shrapnel in WWI, and spent the rest of his days in his bedroom, surrounded by a salon of artists and writers who came to visit, including Paul Eluard, René Magritte, Paul Valéry, and Simone Weill. The young woman did a great job of engaging with the audience for over an hour, and got a warm round of applause at the end. I've never been inside before, and it was an interesting way of discovering the building.