Once a swimming pool and public bath, La Piscine in the northern town of Roubaix is now one of France’s most unusual art museums. Rebuilt in 2001, the Art Deco complex still draws visitors who remember learning to swim there.
Designed by the progressive architect Albert Baert and opened in 1932, Roubaix’s swimming pool remains an iconic site in the former textile town.
““There is a real emotional connection to this place and people are very attached to it,” Karine Lacquemant, curator of La Piscine, told RFI.
The complex served not only as a sports center, which it remained until the 1908s, but also as a public bathhouse.
“It was also a place of hygiene, because (workers’ houses) were often unhygienic,” Lacquemant explained. “There were no bathrooms or showers. So here at the swimming pool there were public baths.”
For the first time in 20 years, there is a public bathhouse in a Paris suburb
The swimming pool was unusual in that it attracted people from all walks of life, “from the sons of workers who lived in circulates (narrow courtyards) to the bosses who ran the textile factories,” Lacquement said.
The centre, which closed in 1985, was converted into an art and industry museum between 1998 and 2001.
Today, the old changing rooms around the swimming pool are used as exhibition spaces where photographs, drawings and textiles are exhibited.
Read more on RFI English
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