Musée Stendhal

Inaugurated on September the 14th 2012, Stendhal Museum is a project which goes beyond the simple restoration of an heritage of furniture. Its mission is to make the public sensitive to the literary work of Stendhal.

This museum, belonging to the Municipal library of Grenoble, gathers :
> Gagnon's apartment, a museographic space and a place of memory
> Stendhal's natal apartment, the living place dedicated to contemporary literature
> Study and Information Library's collections
> A historic itinerary in the ancient centre

GAGNON'S APARTMENT

Docteur Gagnon's apartment, Stendhal's grandfather, located in the ancient center of the city, is the founding element of Stendhal museum. It was there that Stendhal was used to findind shelter from his aunt Séraphie and from his father, Chérubin Beyle, and that he grew up next to his grandfather.

THE NATAL APARTMENT

Painstakingly depicted by Stendhal himself in Vie de Henry Brulard, this apartment, typical of the type of accomodation which was that of the XVIIIth century bourgeois of Grenoble, used to belong to Stendhal's father's family since several generations. To the young Henri, this place was the synonym of happiness until his mother Henriette passed away, in 1790 : he was only 7 at that time.
Then, it became mostly a place of studies, where the young Henri suffered from the authority of his preceptor, the dull and stern abbot Raillane. It was in the drawing-room which overlooked the rue des Vieux-Jésuites that Stendhal, as a teenager, wrote Selmours, his first literary essay.

THE MUNICIPAL LIBRARY'S COLLECTION "MUSEE STENDHAL"

Founded in 1861 and gradually enriched, the Stendhal fund, considered as the most important of the world, consists in three parts:
> 1000 printed copied, all in their original editions, numerous foreign edition as well as studies, thesis and bibliographies on the writer
> 1 151 iconographic pieces of work
> 40 000 manuscript pages (of Lamiel, Souvenirs d'égotisme, Nouvelles etc, ...).

The STENDHALIAN ITINERARIES

Organised by the Office of Tourism, the historical Stendhal itinerary offers the visitors to discover houses or places which are intimately linked to Stendhal's life, signposted by patrimonial plates.