Les statues de l'escalier de la Gare Saint-Charles

Visit the Musée d’Histoire de Marseille - Sequence 12 to discover this exhibition. How Marseille’s colonial past marks the urban landscape. On December 14, 2022, the monumental staircase leading to Saint-Charles Station, along with its gardens, was listed by the State as a Historic Monument. That same year, 100 years after Marseille’s 1922 colonial exhibition, civic mobilizations questioned the traces left by the colonial legacy in Marseille’s public space. The statues on the Saint-Charles station staircase, a site of converging activist movements (anti-racist, feminist and decolonial), were particularly targeted. The colonial allegories of Asia and Africa there are criticized for their role in universal domination and the perpetuation of racial prejudices in the local and national historical narrative. Yet on these stairs, in front of these statues, nothing helps visitors understand what may be offensive. That is the purpose of this exhibition: to shed light on the context in which the staircase was built and its decorative program implemented. A dossier exhibition presented as part of the Mars Imperium project: a web portal providing an overview of knowledge and debates surrounding the colonial and postcolonial history of Marseille. [Sequence 12.] ► To ensure that you can enjoy a complete visit to all our exhibition rooms, we invite you to contact the Museum before your visit. ► To promote access to culture for everyone, the City of Marseille offers free admission to temporary exhibitions on their opening day and every first Sunday of the month. ► All visits and activities related to the exhibition are available on the musees.marseille.fr website