The City’s Heritage Service is currently presenting, until January 17, 2011, an exhibition on the shops, artisans, and factories established in Menton from 1860 to 1960.
Numerous objects, storefronts, and invoices evoke the Mentonese commerce.
Educational display panels strive to describe the city’s atmosphere.
Exhibition Presentation
The exhibition “The Joy of the Streets” aims to revive commerce in Menton during the first half of the 20th century and to pay tribute to all those, from Menton and Europe, who made the economic heart of the city beat.
A shopping street has been entirely recreated for the occasion in the Palais de l’Europe.
Madam, you can finally ask your husband to accompany you on a shopping trip. We guarantee it with money-back assurance: here, you will suffer no rebuke for unnecessary expenses!
Madam, Sir, your wallet will not be solicited. And yet, every storefront will call you, seduce you, but you will remain wise, perhaps pensive about a time gone by. Then, you will remember, you will talk about it, you will listen to the elders telling you about a Menton they knew. You will become strollers, passersby. And the shopping street from more than a hundred years ago, with its decor already in place including its items, posters, and advertisements, comes back to life, chatty, noisy, popular, and elegant. The stroll will take you from shop windows to memories. Merchants you have known, loved, or avoided are waiting for you in their stores. And their counters, their work tools, their items speak for them of a time when people were proud of their profession, proud of a craftsmanship, proud of the respect owed to the clientele, and proud to pass all this down to their children. Sir, you will be delighted, for once, to have accompanied Madam on a window-shopping excursion.
Exhibition Curator: Josiane Tricotti, heritage animator.
