The Monnaie de Paris and the Institut de France have joined forces to enable visitors and passers-by to discover their activities, their history and their heritage treasures in a different way, via a sound work specially designed for their sites and their district.

The geolocated Listeners app, which can be downloaded on any smart phone, enables you to discover both institutions at your own pace.

The tour begins at the Monnaie de Paris. Discover the Quai de Conti and hear about its unique identity, combining a history, a collection, an industrial site and a place of creation housing the exceptional know-how of the Monnaie de Paris: a great factory of excellence – the oldest institution in France and the oldest company in the world – which has not ceased operation since its creation in 864.

The audio tour then takes you to the Institut de France, which houses, under its elegant dome, the five Academies that have been working to improve letters, science and the arts since 1795. The Institut de France also sponsors and supports research and creation. In addition, it is the guardian of important assets comprising buildings and collections that have been bequeathed to it since the late 19th century.

With this new tour, the Monnaie de Paris and the Institut de France are seeking to reveal the historical ties that unite them, to place their activities in their district, in the heart of the 6th arrondissement, and to encourage the public to discover the different spaces of the two institutions (workshops, museum, libraries, shops, bookshops, etc.).

To support these institutions, and with the aim of promoting the areas not open to the public and their hidden or little-known activities, the composer Eddie Ladoire has created an original radiophonic fiction that combines characteristic sounds recorded on the premises and poetic texts written by Marina Bellefaye. 

Podcasts, native speakers and narratives invite you on a journey through the different layers of history, from past to present. At ten geolocated listening points, you can now view and hear the sounds of the Monnaie de Paris and the Institut de France as part of an immersive experience. 

Successive sound images bear poetic witness to eras and lives, mingling the voices of the past with those of the present and intertwining the grand narratives and individual stories of their history. Sounds reveal both things that cannot be seen but have nevertheless existed and those that are hidden and must be carefully preserved.  The on-site capture of sounds and atmospheres reflects the life of these places, inside and out, making it possible to transmit the spirit of the Monnaie de Paris and the Institut de France, the life and soul of the different spaces, while contributing to the immersive listening experience.