The Walking Museum

Depart from the town of Digne-les-Bains, latitude 44.1097500 (N 44° 6’ 35”), longitude 6.2283500 (E 6° 13’ 42”)

• Departure of the trail

• Welcome to the Promenade Museum!
• Cross the tarred road. The trail starts right on the other side. It is also indicated by signs.
• You will discover the water trail. It will lead you through the trees, waterfalls and works of art to the Museum.
• Before you start, you need to know two or three things.
• Know first of all that the so-called Musée Promenade is, in fact, all that you have in front of you: the park, the streams, the works, the exhibition halls, the tropical aquariums, the fossils. Added to this is the butterfly garden, which we will discuss later.
• The building in front of you, the CAIRN, Center for Informal Art and Research on Nature, is a joint action of the Geological Reserve of Haute-Provence, the largest in Europe, and the Gassendi Museum. This space presents exhibitions.
• The objective of this structure is to invite artists in residence to create unique works inspired by the places of the Reserve.
• Have a good walk! Next comment above the Japanese garden.

• The Butterfly Garden

• 131 species of butterflies have been recorded in this garden. It is the first to have been opened in France, in 2002. Its particularity, as the name suggests, is that it is not a greenhouse. Here, butterflies come and go as they please.
• Thirty species of plants have been selected to allow butterflies to reproduce. At the bottom, the river repels butterflies that do not like flying in the middle of large open spaces. At the top, the pines tend to rarefy the flowers. So butterflies take refuge here, in a large migratory corridor.