Imagine, in the heart of the Haute Provence, a peaceful place where the charm, the serenity and the beauty is so natural you can't help but be attracted to it. Imagine a place full of history and with multiple destinies, a verdant setting with thousands of plants, a museum, worthy heir to the ingenuity and the culture of the Haute Provence. This multi-facetted place is called Salagon and it has become over the centuries the symbol of the alliance of a monument, a museum and gardens.
Situated in Mane in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, near Forcalquier, Salagon is first off all a splendidly restored edifice: a site listed as a Historic Monument, with more than 2000 years of history and which the peasants, the monks and the notables have kept alive since Antiquity. Salagon invites you to visit its Romanesque priory and its Renaissance era dwelling as well the archaeological vestiges and contemporary stained glass. Here, heritage is approached from diverse angles and diverse historic periods.
Salagon is a museum devoted to the life of the inhabitants of the Haute Provence. It is an ethnological museum that recounts and makes prominent the past and contemporary culture of Provençal society. The museum of Salagon brings together a collection of more than 15,000 ethnographic objects. For this reason it bears the label “Museum of France”, which testifies to the importance of its collection from a scientific point of view.
The objects and photographs in the museum of Salagon are part of a yearly programme of permanent and temporary exhibitions presented in turn. For that, Salagon has five rooms that house the exhibitions.
6 hectares of greenery, 5 theme gardens that recount the relationship between humans and plants, 1700 plant varieties, 2500 conserved as seeds, a collection of several thousand agricultural implements, all of it part of the riches accumulated over the years by the museum of Salagon.
The medieval garden
This garden recounts through its 400 plants the spirit and multiple uses of gardens in the Middle Ages. It is made up of 3 major spaces: the vegetable garden, the medicinal garden, and the floral garden to which have been added a bed of poisonous and magical plants.
The garden of scents
This garden privileges the sense of sight, scent and touch with floral fragrances sometimes pleasant and exquisite but also sometimes brutal, even fetid, because not all plants smell sweet.
The Jardin des Temps Modernes
This “Garden of Modern Times” is a garden of the 5 continents. It recounts the geographic origins of the vegetables, fruits and flowers, and the journey that allowed them to take root in our fields and gardens over the course of cultural and commercial exchanges like the voyages of discovery.
The Jardin des Simples et des Plantes Villageoises
This “Garden of the Simples and Village Plants” groups together the plants that form the basis of the traditional society of the Haute Provence. Many of them are the common plants that we would gather on our way home from school.
The Jardin de la Noria
A garden of delights and of rest, the garden of the Noria evokes the gardens of the Renaissance. With its benches shaded by woven wickerwork, it offers you a peaceful spot where you can just look around you or meditate.
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