The Minister of Culture has put an end to the controversy. “The pavillon des sources”, where Marie Curie’s laboratory was located in the Fifth Arrondissement of Paris, will not be destroyed, Rima Abdul Malak announced on Friday, January 5th.
The destruction of this building was requested by scientists at the Curie Institute. This cancer fighting foundation wants to construct a five-story building on this site, comprising approximately “2,000 m2” of space to house “the first center for biological chemistry on cancer in Europe,” explained Thierry Philip, President of the Curie Institute, to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). The objective for the institute is to “Keep very high-level researchers” in France, AFP reported.
Although elegant, this building in stones and bricks was particularly radioactive, according to researchers. It was a “radioactive sources storage facility.” According to them, its heritage value is not proven. “Marie Curie did not work there,” he explains.
Except that the Curie museum itself states on its site that the scientist “formed a team there for the manufacture of radium emanation bulbs,” which were then used in “military hospitals to disinfect the war wounds” of 1914-18.
“It was an essential part of Marie Curie’s historic laboratory,” argues Baptiste Gianeselli, who campaigned against the destruction of the building. Project, photos, texts, and testimonies support this. According to him, the destruction of the building was “imminent” after the deployment of barriers and the dismantling of the emergency stairs on Friday.
The construction also threatened “centennial lime trees” that Marie Curie had planted in the adjacent garden, added SOS Paris, another association.
Among the defenders of the site, the famous TV host Stéphane Bern, who was appointed in 2017 to a mission for heritage by the Élysée, estimated earlier this week that “the destruction of the Pavillon des sources de Marie Curie would be a serious mistake” due to “its memorial and symbolic, hence heritage, dimension.”
In September, the Commission of Old Paris, an advisory body to the town hall, had unsuccessfully frowned upon the “massive and disproportionate” nature of the project. But the city is the deciding factor on permits. The subject took on a political turn when, in mid-October, the chief of the opposition LR of the Paris City Council, Rachida Dati, asked the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, to list the site as a historical monument.
Thierry Philip responded on Friday to the minister’s announcement: “If an alternative solution can be found on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Curie Institute will accept it. If not, the debate between memory and living science must be settled serenely,” he wrote. Since decontamination work is also suspended, the Institute will “make laboratories available” to protect researchers in the coming months.
