Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône

  • Departmental Archives of Bouches-du-Rhône

Address

18 rue Mirès BP 10099
Marseille
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
13303 Marseille Cedex
France

Phone

+33 (0)4 13 31 82 08

Email


Web

https://www.archives13.fr/

History

The Bouches-du-Rhône departmental archives were created, like all similar archives, by the law of 5 Brumaire, Year V, which required the papers of the Ancien Régime institutions, which had just been abolished by the Revolution of 1789, to be collected in the main town of each department.

Within the network formed by the departmental archives, common elements were put in place, ensuring a uniformity of professional practices throughout the country. Thus, from 1841 onwards, a classification framework, i.e. a common method of filing documents, was gradually introduced. As for personnel, the most important measure for the network was the decision in 1850 to place at the head of each repository an archivist trained at the Ecole nationale des Chartes, created in 1821.

For more than two hundred years, the institution has continued its work of collecting and preserving public and private archival documents. Its missions have expanded considerably and have also adapted to changes in the administration and the needs of the public. The decentralisation laws of 1982 made local authorities the owners of their archives, thus leading to the transfer of the maintenance of the buildings and the management of the personnel of the departmental archives to the general and then departmental councils.

For almost a century, the departmental archives were annexes to the prefectures. This was the case for the Bouches-du-Rhône Archives, which occupied premises in the Prefecture and then in the annex on rue Saint-Sébastien (6th arrondissement) until 2006.

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the importance of the town of Aix-en-Provence, the seat of the main civil and religious institutions of Provence under the Ancien Régime, led to some of the archives being housed in an annex. At the request of the notables of Aix, the Ministry of Public Education appointed an archivist around 1884, thereby firmly establishing the division of the archives between two sites. In 2016, the Departmental Council took the decision to bring together all the collections in Marseille, the transfer of which was completed in 2018.

Records Management and Collecting Policies

They are organised in such a way as to respect the separation between public and private archives. Within the public collections, the presentation follows a traditional chronological logic between ancient, revolutionary, modern and contemporary archives. For the latter group of modern and contemporary archives, which have been grouped together in order to restore the coherence of the collections, the organisation adopted is thematic. Please refer to the finding aids for detailed analyses. Read more...

Building(s)

The collections are now all housed in a building completed in 2006 that the Archives share with the Bibliothèque départementale. This association of the two structures gives its name to the building, the ABD, the work of the Marseille architect Corinne Vezzoni. The public reception areas are highly versatile, since, in addition to the archive reading room, they include an exhibition gallery of 250 square metres and an auditorium with 150 seats. The archives are housed in a specific area, the Galet. This part of the building houses the archive storage areas on seven floors under controlled climatic and security conditions.

Archival and Other Holdings

The documents kept in the Departmental Archives are mainly public archives, i.e. documents produced by administrations or public services. These include all the archives of the civil, military and religious institutions of the Ancien Régime, known as the ancient archives. In addition, there are the documents produced since 1789 by the State administrations present in the department, in particular the prefecture and the courts, as well as those of the Conseil général and then the departmental council. Finally, the Bouches-du-Rhône Archives have an active policy of collecting and acquiring private archives: papers of families, personalities, companies, associations, etc. The repository holds nearly 65 linear kilometres of documents of all kinds: parchments, maps and plans, old and contemporary photographs, audiovisual recordings and, recently, digital data.

Finding Aids, Guides, and Publication

https://www.archives13.fr/archive/recherche/fonds/n:93

Opening Times

The reading room is open at the usual times:

  • Monday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m;
  • Tuesday to Friday from 9 am to 6 pm;
  • Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 12.45 p.m. (only from September to June).

Conditions of Access

There are no conditions of nationality or diploma required for the consultation of archive documents, which is free of charge. However, access to the reading room where documents can be consulted is reserved for holders of a reader's card, which can only be issued on presentation of a valid official identity document (national identity card, driving licence or passport). The card is renewable annually.

Requests to consult documents are made via the LIGEO software on the computer stations placed in front of the room attendant. The number of articles is limited to ten per half-day. Readers may only consult one article at a time. However, three articles may be kept in reserve for eight days from the last date of consultation.

Check-out times : checkout is approximately every half hour from 9.15 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no interruption of communications between 12 noon and 2 p.m.

Reproduction Services

Readers may photograph freely available documents with their own equipment (camera, smartphone), provided they do not use flash and handle the archives with care.

It is also possible to order off-line digital photographs by filling in a request for a quote for reprographic or digital photography work: ask the scientific assistant.

Photocopying in the reading room is currently suspended.

In the reading room, readers may photograph communicable documents free of charge with their own equipment (camera, smartphone), provided they handle the archives with care and do not use a flash.

Digital photographs can be ordered at a later date in the reading room by submitting a request for a quote for reprographic or digital photography work. It is possible, under certain conditions, to order digital reproductions of precisely identified documents remotely by sending an e-mail to archives13@departement13.fr.

An estimate, established according to the current rates, is then sent to the applicant. After payment of the estimate by cheque or bank transfer, and unless hard copies are expressly requested, the reproductions are sent in the form of digital files via an electronic exchange platform. The research and reproduction of documents by the Departmental Archives can only be carried out if the documents are precisely identified. In the case of documents communicated by way of derogation from the ordinary rules of communicability, reproduction may only be carried out if the authorisation granted explicitly mentions the reproduction of the archives (see page Communicability of archives). Documents whose physical condition does not allow them to be handled may not be reproduced. Finally, the Departmental Archives reserve the right not to grant requests for large-scale reproductions, the execution of which exceeds the material and human resources dedicated to this task.

Read more on reproduction tariffs here

Public Areas

The reading room has fifteen computer workstations including a CD-DVD player with a headphone socket and a sound card. Five of these stations are reserved for ordering documents. The other ten are for consulting digitised databases. Wi-Fi is also available in the room. Staff members are also available to provide technical assistance with computer tools and inter-service microfilm loans.

Sources

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