Museon Arlaten

Museon Arlaten is a museum dedicated to the ethnography of Provence. It is located in Arles, at 29, rue de la République, and it is housed in the 15th century Hôtel particulier Laval-Castellane, now a monument historique.The museum was founded by Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral and opened in 1899. With the help of Jules Charles-Roux and Jeanne de Flandreysy, he established a gallery with statues from the Antiquity found on the grounds of the museum. Mistral had worked to build a Provençal literary revival since the 1850s, but in 1896 he declared that he wished to create a more enduring statement of Provençal tradition by building a "Pantheon of Provence" that would bring together "all the memories of our race." It sought to become "the museum of the region, the complete representation of a pays." Much of the collection focused on the traditional clothing of Arlesienne women, but it collected widely. Originally, labels were in Provençal, well after that language had ceased to dominate the region. In his history of the region, Marseillais business-man, politician and historian Jules Charles-Roux explained the museum's choice of language: "Provençal is the language of a free people. And it is this love of humble people, this profound sense of equality, this respect for the spirit of the people, this magnificent understanding of its greatness that motivated Mistral to build a museum to house all the modest objects of daily life,... a museum for everything that makes up the originality, the flavor of Provençal life."

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