An innovative master plan for historical heritage and collections

[Article] - Published on September 4, 2025 in Heritage

While the University of Montpellier’s historical heritage is recognized for its exceptional nature, it remains largely unknown to the university community and the general public. To make it more accessible to everyone, restore it, and showcase it, the University of Montpellier has recently adopted a master plan for its heritage and collections.

From the historic medical building to the Jardin des Plantes and its administration, including the Institute of Botany and the Faculty of Law, all the way to the marine station in Sète, the University of Montpellier boasts a remarkable architectural heritage. This historical legacy extends beyond its buildings to include exceptional collections, distinguished by both their quality and diversity:  nearly 13,000 anatomical specimens, 6 million herbarium sheets, and 6,000 drawings and prints at the Atger Museum, not to mention millions of fossils, zoological and geological specimens, physics and astronomy objects, medicinal herbs and pharmaceutical items, educational materials, and documentary archives…

 All in all, this is an invaluable historical heritage that stands proudly in the city or lies hidden on shelves. To better protect, promote, and make it accessible, the University of Montpellier has adopted its very first master plan for historical heritage and collections, which was approved by the Board of Trustees on July 15, 2025. This strategic and operational document sets out the guidelines and roadmap for actions related to historical heritage to be implemented in alignment with the institution’s strategy.

Centuries-old heritage

And in Montpellier more than anywhere else, this master plan is of paramount importance.“You don’t govern a historic university founded 800 years ago and endowed with centuries-old heritage in the same way as a university founded in^{the 21st} century,”emphasizes Gérald Chanques, UM’s vice president for historic heritage, for whom one-off initiatives are not enough to highlight these scientific and educational treasures. This is why the 2021–2026 multi-year contract has spearheaded this innovative plan to develop a comprehensive vision for the promotion of the university’s historic real estate and movable heritage.

“We needed a long-term plan that would bring together the teaching and research community, students, the administration, the various central departments, and the constituent units, while also providing clarity for funding bodies such as the state, the metropolitan authority, and the region,” explains Gérald Chanques. This ambitious project began with a crucial phase: an assessment of the current state of affairs, carried out in 2023 and 2024 with the full involvement of the Office of Scientific Culture and Historical Heritage and its vice presidents, Thierry Lavabre-Bertrand, followed by Gérald Chanques and Isabelle Parrot, as well as the Real Estate Heritage Department, led by Yves Correc and Maxime Pouget, and its vice president, Bernard Maurin, who worked on this plan coordinated by a project manager, Céline Dumas at the DCSPH, headed by Caroline Ducoureau. This work was carried out in collaboration with the SCD, the DCOM, and the DVC (Art & Culture Department), the SCUIO-IP, the DAGI, the DSIN, and the DLO.

“This project provided an opportunity to compile the most comprehensive inventory possible—a painstaking task that requires significant human resources,” explains the vice president. From the corridors of the Botanical Institute to the basements of the Triolet campus buildings, the collections are spread across nearly all of the institution’s sites, which can pose a challenge when it comes to optimizing their management.

Essential digitization

And once the inventory has been completed, the question of digitization arises, “essential not only for preserving these resources but also for making them accessible to as many people as possible— Professors, researchers, and the general public.” While a large portion of the UM’s documentary heritage collections has been digitized, only 35% of the movable heritage has been digitized to date, including some 1.4 million herbarium sheets digitized as part of the e-Recolnat project. And numerous specimens from the natural history collections will soon join them as part of the E-col+ project, recently launched with the goal of producing high-resolution 3D anatomical data and making it available to everyone. “And to support this growing volume of data, UM has acquired collection management software that will centralize the entire collection,” explains Gérald Chanques.

For these collections are not merely of heritage value.“They were designed from the outset as tools for teaching and research,” notes the vice president. A role they continue to fulfill today, as exemplified by the mineralogy collections used in the training of geosciences students, or the zoology and paleontology collections at Triolet. And to strengthen this close link between heritage, research, and education, the vice president for historical heritage emphasizes the importance of better informing Professors, researchers, and students about the existence of these collections and the diversity of their uses.

Moreover, the academic community is not the only target of this increased visibility; this unique heritage must be made accessible to all audiences, including schoolchildren. To achieve this, the master plan outlines a groundbreaking initiative to showcase the collections: ForUM.

Museum tour

This ambitious project redefines the scope of the university’s collections, centered around four iconic sites whose renovation is being funded by ongoing state-regional planning contracts: the Institute of Botany, the Jardin des Plantes, the Jardin des Plantes Administration Building, and the historic Faculty of Medicine building. Located in the heart of the city, ForUM aims to be a true crossroads of knowledge, at the intersection of science, medicine, and pharmacy, botany and the environment, near the Faculty of Law—and thus at the heart of Montpellier’s academic history—and in close proximity to other campuses served by the intersection of three tram lines by the end of the year. This urban heritage hub, open to the city, will align perfectly with the “ Science with and for Society” label obtained in 2024 by UM for the “UM VIA des Sciences ” project, developed in partnership with the Montpellier Metropolitan Area.

“ForUM will offer visitors a true journey through interconnected museum spaces, starting with a large hall of over 200 square meters at the Botanical Institute, a true showcase for the University’s collections. Visitors will then continue their exploration of the heritage by heading to the various ForUM sites in the immediate vicinity, or by taking the tram to the University’s other sites to better discover the UM’s exceptional heritage,”emphasizes Gérald Chanques, who also highlights the importance of this project in“making this unique heritage more accessible to funders.”

A major project that will help restore visibility to this ever-evolving heritage.“As a testament to a community’s past, it has been built up over the centuries, yet it continues to grow and take shape in real time. This university heritage must not be preserved in formaldehyde; it is a living heritage that wecertainly wishto protect, but also to keep alive and help develop for today’s university generation.”

View the Master Plan for Historic Heritage and Collections

Keywords: Heritage, University