Albert Ciurana Pharmacy Museum

Housed within the Faculty of Pharmacy, the Albert Ciurana Museum offers a deep dive into the history of this discipline, which has been taught in Montpellier since the 13th century. Telling the story of pharmacy in all its forms (industrial, biological, hospital-based, and retail): is indeed the purpose of this museum, founded in 1972 by Albert Ciurana, a retail pharmacist. As the only pharmacy museum of this significance located on a university campus, it is continually enriched by donations and run by volunteers who are licensed pharmacists.

Historic pharmacies

Art objects, paintings, herbariums, machines, porcelain; antique earthenware, turtle shells, boa or crocodile skins, snakes, and buffalo horns, as well as ovens, stills, crucibles, and retorts… The museum recreates the unique atmosphere of 19th- and 20th-century apothecaries and offers a glimpse into the daily lives of Montpellier’s master apothecaries.

An integral part of medical thought, medicine lies at the heart of this collection, featuring raw materials drawn from botany, physical chemistry, mycology, toxicology, and poisons—as well as human sources. The museum thus traces the lives and work of scholars who have shaped the history of science and established the reputation of Montpellier’s pharmaceutical tradition.

Among them was Antoine-Jérôme Balard, a pharmacist and chemist credited with the discovery of bromine, who served as the mentor to L. Pasteur and M. Berthelot. Or Jules-Émile Planchon, a brilliant botanist, pharmacist, and physician, dean of the School of Pharmacy and director of the Jardin des Plantes, who helped save the Languedoc vineyards from extinction during the phylloxera crisis at the end of the 19th century.