Should we prioritize science or heritage conservation? For the moment, the government has not managed to resolve the matter which is shaking up the Institut Curie in Paris. Located very close to the Pantheon, the site called Pavillon des deux Sources has been the subject of intense debate since the announcement of the demolition of a small historic building bearing the memory of Marie Curie, double Nobel Prize winner and first woman to have received this prestigious title. This Friday, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak announced the suspension of the demolition of this site where a biological chemistry center for cancer is to be built.
The Institut Curie, a foundation fighting cancer, wants to build a five-story building on this site on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, or around 2,000 m2 of surface area. Objective: to house “the first biological chemistry center for cancer in Europe”, according to its president Thierry Philip.
According to him, the scientific project is “indispensable” and “must remain on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain” while being aware of the “memorial issue”.
Stéphane Bern gets involved
Among the defenders of the place, the famous host Stéphane Bern estimated that the destruction of the flag “would be a serious mistake”, because of “its memorial and symbolic and therefore heritage dimension”. Response from the president: the Pavillon des Sources is not a former Marie Curie laboratory but a former radioactive waste storage site empty today. Specifying in passing that the Curie pavilion, its laboratory, “is not threatened”.