Saint-Étienne Mine Museum
Couriot pit Headframe.
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| Established | 1991 |
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| Location | 3, boulevard Franchet d'Espèrey, Saint-Étienne, Rhône-Alpes, France |
| Coordinates | 45°26′19″N 4°22′36″E / 45.438514°N 4.376636°E |
| Type | Show Mine |
| Collections | Mining 15 hectares (37 acres) |
| Visitors | 50,000–60,000 visitors/year |
| Website | www |
The Saint-Étienne Mine Museum is a French museum founded in 1991 in the city of Saint-Étienne in the French department of the Loire situated in the Rhône-Alpes region. The site is registered as an historical monument since 2011
Officially named "Puits Couriot" (Couriot Coalmine)/Parc Musée de la Mine (Mine Museum Park)", it is set up in the buildings of the last coal pit of the city (closed in 1973).
The museum is also a show mine and thus offers the possibility to visit a reconstructed gallery and the historical buildings of the former mine site:
The museum also offers three permanent exhibition tours (launched in December 2014). Those exhibitions display a selection of objects from the museum's collections:
The site is also part of a cultural program (performing arts, film screenings, festivals). It was awarded the Musée de France label.
The Couriot pit site covers an area of 115 hectares (37 acres) if the slag heaps are included). It is the best preserved remnant and the most comprehensive showing of the coal activity of the area.
The facilities situated above ground responded to the need to circulate men, coal and equipment in the same limited space. In order to manage traffic flow near the pit, the site was organized under a system of where former quarries used to be.
Washing rooms and sorting plants were installed on the lower platform called the "plâtre"(the plaster) and were demolished in 1969.
For the most part, the buildings of the intermediary platform, which have been preserved, date back to the First World War (administrative buildings, boiler room, former lamp room, engine room and the "petit lavabo" (the small sink)) and to the post-war era ("grand lavabo" (the large sink) and lamp room of 1948).
The upper platform is not open to the public.
In its most recent configuration, the pit could accommodate nearly 2,000 miners and several hundred workers every day.
The site has long been a "showcase", headquarters of the . It was the largest pit of the area until the 1930s and remained the western sector headquarters after the 1946 nationalisation .
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Wikipedia