In Rennes, the Fine Arts are moving into the neighborhoods
In the Maurepas district, known for being a drug trading hub, the extension of the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts opened in early 2025. An architectural success for the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung,” which nevertheless calls into question the municipal social engineering strategy aimed at making culture more accessible.
If you want to buy or sell crack cocaine in Rennes, Brittany, you head to the shopping center in the heart of the Maurepas district, an outlying social housing complex dating back to the 1960s that has seen better days. And as in almost every other French city, the site's redevelopment raises the question: is it better to renovate the buildings or rebuild from scratch?
The city of Rennes has opted for a radically optimistic approach: opening a museum at the foot of a dilapidated residential building. The young architects of the Nantes-based firm Titan have achieved the feat of transforming a former senior citizens' club into an elegant satellite of the venerable Museum of Fine Arts in the city center.
While 19th - century French painting is the core of the main museum, the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts also houses 1,811 important works from the Louvre, earning it the nickname "Little Louvre." Its collection, which ranges from Egyptian mummies to Japanese lacquerware, Greek ceramics, Roman sculptures, and Indian paintings, is therefore particularly luxurious for a medium-sized city.
The curators had a special idea for the new site. Some local residents were able to choose an object from
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Published in the country's financial capital, it is a traditional and benchmark title, with centrist and liberal leanings. With a cutting-edge international presence, it is read by all German speakers. Eric Gujer, its editor-in-chief since 2015, has driven two notable developments. First, what some have deplored as a right-wing shift in the newspaper's positions, particularly on immigration issues. Second, the desire to consolidate its position in the German market in an attempt to offset the declining sales facing the daily, like the rest of the press.
When it was launched on January 12, 1780, the Zürcher Zeitung positioned itself as a kind of international courier of the time. In the first issue, editor-in-chief Salomon Gessner wrote: “We have arranged to receive news from the best French, English, Italian, Dutch, and German newspapers, as well as from private correspondents, and to print it as quickly as our neighbors can.” In fact, the title specialized in international affairs, as censorship at the time prevented any serious journalistic work on Zurich and Switzerland.
The NZZ website is a veritable database: in addition to articles from the online editorial team, around a hundred files group together articles from the print and online versions on major topics.
Courrier International
