The Pavilion des Sources, a small building that housed Marie Curie’s work near the Pantheon in Paris, will be kept in its original location, the government and the Curie Institute said on Saturday, after several months of controversy. “Following an in-depth study, (…) the new project presented provides that the Sources pavilion will remain in its initial location and will be integrated into a new building dedicated to research called Marie Curie – Claudius Regaud », Specify in a joint press release the Institut Curie as well as the Ministries of Culture and Higher Education.
The project plans to “reconcile the preservation of the Sources pavilion in its current location with the construction of a new building aimed at developing a scientific project of international scope for research against cancer”.
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The preserved pavilion will become a new cultural space for the Curie Museum which will pay tribute to the two founders of the Curie Institute, the physicist and chemist Marie Curie (1867-1934) and the doctor Claudius Regaud (1870-1940). The once planned demolition of the historic site had sparked controversy between defenders of science and heritage, the latter considering that the destruction of the small historic building would be a serious attack on the memory of Marie Curie.
At the beginning of January, Rima Abdul Malak, then Minister of Culture, put the project on hold. A few weeks later, Rachida Dati, who succeeded him at the ministry, announced that the pavilion would be moved “a few meters”, allowing a cancer center to be “developed”. Ultimately, the building will not be moved at all.
The first stage of the implementation of this real estate project involves “the decontamination work on the pavilion which will begin in mid-April 2024 for a period of three months,” adds the press release. A modification permit will be submitted before May 12. The next stages of the project will be communicated later.