Musée Stendhal

Inaugurated in 2012, the Musée Stendhal brings together the Gagnon apartment, Stendhal's birthplace apartment, a historical itinerary in Grenoble's old town and the Stendhal collections of Study and Heritage Library.

The Gagnon apartment
The apartment of Dr. Gagnon, Stendhal's maternal grandfather, is the cornerstone of the networked Stendhal Museum. Rehabilitated in 2012, its architectural design and museography bring to life for the general public the apartment in which the heart and mind of the future writer were awakened. The apartment includes the large Italian-style living room, the natural history cabinet, the study or "summer cabinet", the guest room, and the terrace with its oriental pergola, better known as "Stendhal's trellis".

Stendhal's native apartment
Accurately depicted by Stendhal himself in his autobiographical story Vie de Henry Brulard, Stendhal's native apartment was typical of 18th century bourgeois living and belonged to the family of Stendhal's father. For the young Henri Beyle, this place rhymed with happiness until the death of his mother Henriette in 1790, when he was just 7 years old. The apartment then became essentially a place of study, where the child was taught by his tutor, the austere Abbé Raillane. It was in the salon de compagnie, which overlooked Rue des Vieux-Jésuites, now Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that the future Stendhal made his first literary attempts. Situated a stone's throw from Dr. Gagnon's apartment, the birthplace today houses the administrative and educational premises of the Stendhal Museum.

The historical itinerary
In Grenoble's historic center, discover the places that marked the life of the young Henri Beyle. A dozen of them are marked by bilingual French/English heritage plaques. This tour is an integral part of the networked Musée Stendhal.

Grenoble's Stendhalian heritage: richness and complementarity
The Musée Stendhal is a meeting place for the Stendhalian heritage preserved in Grenoble: the library's exceptional literary and documentary holdings, a collection of objects on Stendhal and his times, and the built heritage made up of the places Stendhal lived in, visited and described. These three collections are complementary and inseparable, and the history of their creation and preservation bears witness to the special attention Grenoble has paid to the writer for almost two centuries.