Les Années folles — the Roaring Twenties at the Musée du Bâtiment

The Musée du Bâtiment mounts one temporary exhibition a year, and in 2026 it takes on the interwar decade — the years when French decorative art moved from Art Nouveau’s plant forms towards the harder geometry that would be called Art Deco.

The exhibition has a local anchor, and it is a good one. Louis Galfione designed the Grand Café on place d’Allier, begun in 1898 and opened the following year: mirrors, stucco pilasters with garlands, metalwork, a painted ceiling by the Moulins artist Auguste Sauroy. Galfione also directed the decoration of the confectioner Aux Palets d’or, still trading. Fifteen minutes on foot from the museum, his work is not a photograph on a wall but a room you can sit down in — which is the argument a museum about the building trades is well placed to make.

The museum itself occupies an eighteenth-century town house that once held the Compagnons du Devoir, the French craft guild network, and its permanent collection covers the trades of the building site: tools, models, plans and drawings.

Dates and admission

7 May to 4 October 2026, Wednesday to Sunday, 14:00 to 18:00. Admission is free. Entry is also included in the Moulins City Pass. Groups by appointment.

Where

Musée du Bâtiment, 18 rue du Pont Ginguet, 03000 Moulins, Allier, France.

Sources

• Musée du Bâtiment — official site
• Office de tourisme de Moulins — exhibition, season and admission
• Grand café (Moulins), French Wikipedia — Galfione attribution and 1898–1899 dates