When frenchman Louis Mantin died in 1905, he mandated that his house be sealed up for over a century, then reopened to the public as a museum. And now it is, effectively becoming a time capsule for all to see.
The French mansion, located in the town of Moulins, is full of artifacts and pieces that Mantin had collected over the course of his life, including paintings, tapestries, prehistoric flints, Egyptian relics and other pieces from the Medieval and Neolithic eras.
According to the BBC The mansion is located in Moulins, a town located in Central France. Before the home could be opened to the public as a museum, it had to undergo a 3.5 million euro retrofit.
As for Mantin, he was a lifelong bachelor who inherited a crapload of money from his dad and was basically obsessed with his own mortality. Apparently, this was his attempt at immortality. Here’s what the BBC had to say about his motives:
Mantin only had a few years to indulge his aesthetic fantasies. Knowing that his death was approaching, he made a will in which he made sure his treasured house would be saved.
“In the will, he says that he wants the people of Moulins in 100 years time to be able to see what was the life of a cultured gentleman of his day,” said assistant curator Maud Leyoudec.
“A bachelor with no children, he was obsessed with death and the passage of time. It was his way of becoming eternal.”
Apparently, he never technically stipulated that the house be sealed shut when he died (only that it become a museum after 100 years), but the town went ahead and did that anyways. And that’s neat to see, considering some public french entity probably could have gone in an effectively seized it all, much like the city of Philadelphia did with the Barnes collection. [BBC News, Image via News Auvergne]