Digging into ideas

Estelle Fruleux, Curator of La Mine, Musée du Carreau Wendel  


“For the Carreau Wendel mining museum in Petite-Rosselle, 2006 was a year of renewal, a year of countless new ideas.Visitors can now see the largest mining site in France, the only one that is still complete, something unique. This is very far removed from a dusty old museum. Taking the plunge into our industrial heritage is fun and it makes great use of interactive features.

The general public is taken into another world 1,200 metres down, thanks to a simulator. Actually the lift cage only descends about twelve metres but down there, over the 4,500 metres of exhibition space laid out by former miners using the mine’s equipment, people pass through five work sites.

They can see what a miner’s day entailed thanks to a 3D film that reveals a world in constant movement for mining should not be seen as a scene from Zola’s book, “Germinal”. It is a world on the move, the subject of intense research using very advanced technology.

Our region’s industrial heritage, our coal mines, is firstly retold through the men who experienced it. The museum has been built by and for miners. And the future is always built on the foundation of history.’’