Photo : Wikimedia Commons
Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux
The Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux, in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), opened on 11 November 2011. It was born of the acquisition by the Pays de Meaux conurbation community, in 2005, of the collection of Jean-Pierre Verney, a self-taught historian and photographer, who had gathered over more than forty years some 50,000 objects and documents on the First World War, one of the most important private collections in Europe.
The building, the work of the architect Christophe Lab, covers some 7,000 m², of which about 3,000 m² of permanent exhibition. It stands at the foot of the statue "La Liberté éplorée", a monument by Frederick MacMonnies given to France by the United States in 1932.
The route presents notably weapons and artillery pieces, uniforms from many belligerent countries, objects from the front and the home front, newspapers, posters, photographs and letters. It deals with the mobilisation of societies, the role of women and children, tactics, the body and suffering, the globalisation of the conflict and the intervention of the Americans. The museum also has an auditorium, educational spaces and a documentation centre, and is aimed at school groups as well as the general public.
