The Museum and the Conservatory were not valued

After more than three years of work, last December, the Bisontins were able to rediscover a place of the completely redesigned revolution, last touch of the renovated market-Fine-Arts District. To celebrate the event, the sober and wide façade of the Museum of fine arts and archaeology was used giant screen to a history of the places all images. "Besançon until then had no significant place to organize events", explains Didier Pasquier, designer of the development. "The Museum and the Conservatory were not valued." "With its car park, this place was not one", he says. These defects are now components and a few days ago, for the first time, the journal on 14 July took place on new yellow, grey and black granite paving. In 1991, with the CCI du Doubs, the city landed the issue of the fate of the market-Fine-Arts District, which the commercial fabric was in decline. The market, split in two, malfunctioned, and the square of the revolution was mainly occupied by a parking lot in surface, which has now disappeared.

Culture and crafts in mouth

Has always been the Plaza located in the loop formed by the Doubs and connected to the river by the passage of the eight holes has a double identity. Here, as early as the middle ages, it has killed livestock, sold the fish stored grain, bartered food. Ancestral place of trade related to the trades of mouth, the place has been a cultural dimension in the 19th century. The current Museum of fine arts and archaeology was completed in 1842. It was intended to house the collections of works of art and books, while sharing the space with the halle aux grains, the school of fine arts and a concert hall. The walls of the regional Conservatory of music, they first were those of the municipal grenier, as soon as the construction of the building in 1731, and is there then followed the school of watchmaking and the Ecole des beaux-arts. For the particular hotel Goudimel, it was occupied by the police station before becoming the seat of the Presidency of the University of Franche-Comté.

In the 18th century, the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who built the Saline Royale about 40 kilometres away, would have even thought to implement on this site the City Theatre, which was eventually built to promenade Granvelle, under Vauban Citadel. On the renovated square, unpacking market, which takes place three times per week, still occupies a central place and is called to develop.

The covered market, previously housed under an aging and unsightly, halle has been installed in a new building, just behind the Museum, which he shared with a multiplex cinema. The double historical vocation of the district was thus retained. Didier Pasquier, who has translated into its project this commitment to hybrid use of the sites, spoke of "crossover" between culture and commerce of mouth, or "food for the body and mind."

The place of the revolution became pedestrian but is a convergence of the bus network node. From an architectural point of view, the authors of the project had to escape topographic constraints and shape to trapezoid rectangle of the esplanade to redevelop a geometry, the monumental fountain of Delacroix moved to become the starting point for twelve reference lines leading to all strategic points of the place: buildings, streets, passages. The fountain water games and subtle light implementation complement this very mineral development that the Bisontins taste this summer while strolling on the many terraces. The new place is being honoured with a "Ribbon of heritage" by the French Federation of the building, and the erosion of trade should soon be more than a bad memory.

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