Launching of the project - May 25, 2011

Christian Noyer announced the launching of the project and the winner of the design competition.

On May 25, 2011, Gov­ernor Christian Noyer announced to the press the launching by the Banque de France of the “Cité de l’Économie et de la Monnaie” project.

This museum should enable the general public, and in par­ticular the youth, to improve their know­ledge of eco­nomics. Located in the former Banque de France branch of Paris-​​Malesherbes, it will present, in an inter­active form, the main con­cepts of eco­nomics and money. It will also showcase part of the Bank’s col­lec­tions of bank­notes, coins, machinery and furniture.

A European-​​wide com­pet­ition was launched in May 2010 to select, among a hundred applic­a­tions, both from France and abroad, six teams, which sub­mitted their pro­jects in November. These pro­jects were examined by a high-​​level jury in early 2011.

The team that was selected by the jury and chosen by the Banque de France in March 2011, is led by the firm of archi­tects of Yves Lion, in cooper­ation with the museo­grapher – sceno­grapher François Confino. The Ateliers Lion have recently worked on several pro­jects related to his­torical monu­ments, in par­ticular at the Louvre museum (porte des Lions) and in Dijon (musée des beaux arts). The Confino agency, which came in the spot­light with the success of the Cités-​​Ciné exhib­ition in la Vil­lette, has just opened an auto­mobile museum in Turin and is involved in setting up the Charlie Chaplin museum in Switzerland.