Created on the initiative of her daughter, Colette Renée de Jouvenel, and opened in 1995, the Colette Museum has French museum status. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, the famous author, was born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in 1873.
The museum dedicated to her in the heart of her native village is housed in the château, rebuilt in the 17th century. Although she never stayed there, Colette mentioned it at the beginning of her first novel, Claudine à l’école : « Montigny [...] is a staircase below a large castle, rebuilt under Louis XV and already more dilapidated than the Saracen tower, thick, low, all sheathed in ivy, which is crumbling from above, a little bit every day ».
The so-called Saracen tower is a keep with an unusual ovoid plan, dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. It is in this bed of greenery and history that the Musée Colette rests, « a museum for the senses as much as for the mind » as museographer Hélène Mugot puts it. A living museum where Colette’s voice and gaze accompany the visitor to an imaginary library where chance leads to the discovery of the writer and her works.
