Memorial to the 1902 catastrophe - Frank A. Perret museum

The museum is located on the exceptional site of the former Esnotz Battery, which dominates the town and opens onto the wide panorama of the bay of Saint-Pierre dominated by Mount Pelee.

Founded in 1933 by vulcanologist Frank A. Perret - witness to the second eruption sequence in 1929 - it is the oldest museum in Martinique.
Dedicated to the eruption of Mount Pelée, which destroyed the city and its inhabitants on May 8, 1902, the museum had already undergone a modernization in 1969 and then a renovation in 1988 when Saint-Pierre obtained the label " City of Art and History".
Since then, the conditions for welcoming the public and for conserving and exhibiting the collection had slowly deteriorated and no longer met the requirements of the name Musée de France, which the institution has enjoyed since 2004. The museum had therefore closed in December 2018.

This new place of memory presents a more cultural approach to the disaster by highlighting the experience of the people of Martinique and its global impact. The museum's permanent exhibition presents twenty-eight new movable objects resulting from archaeological excavations carried out in Saint-Pierre over the past thirty years. Objects deformed, melted or agglomerated under the effect of intense heat: the bronze bell of the Saint Etienne Church in the Centre, the gate of the Cyparis dungeon... A room also lists the names of 7,500 victims identified to date.

The sober and elegant building, with its refined contemporary lines, was designed by the architect Olivier Compère. The black burned wood façade with silvery shards stands out against the blue of the Caribbean Sea. This Japanese burned wood technique, the Shu sugi ban, echoes the tragic history of Saint-Pierre.

The 1902 Memorial to the Catastrophe - Frank A. Perret Museum is managed by the Culturabam Endowment Fund, a non-profit organization specially created by the Clément Foundation* with a work budget of approximately €1.5 million.

*The Clément Foundation, GBH's corporate foundation, has been the main private cultural operator in Martinique for thirty years. It carries out patronage actions in favour of the arts and cultural heritage in the Caribbean and French overseas territories.

To find out more, visit La route des Musées et des Jardins! We visited for you! :

https://www.martinique-tour.com/decouvrir/sites-a-visiter/la-route-des-musees-jardins-on-a-visite-pour-vous/

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