LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE INGUIMBERTINE ET LES MUSÉES

The library and museums form a single cultural institution founded in 1745 by Dom Malachi d'Inguimbert, Bishop of Carpentras. The origin of the bibliographic and museum collections is the same: it is all manuscripts, rare and precious prints, currencies and medals, paintings, artefacts, miscellaneous and curiosa collected and collected by Bishop of Inguimbert during the 26 years he spent in Italy. When he was appointed to Carpentras in 1735, the prelate won his collections and supplemented them with several acquisitions (notably in 1747, 118 of the records of the famous Savant Nicolas Nicolas de Peiresc) and finally installed them in a building adjacent to the episcopal palace. Its decision to make it a foundation accessible to the public saved the institution during the Revolution. During the th and th centuries, many donors contributed to its enrichment through gifts and legacies of works of art, archaeological and lapidary parts, invaluable works, correspondence, musical instruments and scores. In 1847, all of the collections were transferred to a particular hotel purchased by the city and enlarged for reasons of place from 1872 to 1887. The correlation between the written heritage and the museum heritage is such that the collections have not been divided as they have been elsewhere. This meeting of coherent and complementary assemblies of heritage works and documents is of inestimable interest.

Today, this complex establishment is among the richest institutions in France. It includes a public reading library, international heritage funds, the old municipal archives and four muséographiques collections: fine arts (Duplessis Museum), decorative arts (Sobirats Museum), arts and popular traditions (Enchanting Museum), archaeology (Stone Museum, closed to the public). Due to the exceptional quality of its funds, the Inguimbertine library has been in the classified municipal libraries since July 5, 1897. This hybrid status of a library-museum is now almost unique in France. The whole is led by a state conservative who ensures that this precious testimony of the interdisciplinarity desired by the founder of Inguimbertine is maintained and cohesive. From the point of view of buildings, conditions for the conservation and reception of the public, the establishment now has a critical saturation threshold due to the scale of the collections: 250 000 volumes, including 100 000 old, 3 000 manuscripts, 16 000 drawings and prints, 4 000 periodicals, 6 000 currencies and medals, 1 000 paintings, 300 sculptures, 1 500 art objects and several thousand archaeological pieces. The collections are still regularly enriched thanks to donations and acquisitions of rare and valuable works or documents, especially during public sales. It is now a four-metre scale to reach the top of the rays.