Musée des arts et traditions populaires

The objects on display at the Musée Joseph-Fortuné Layraud illustrate a chronicle made up of fictitious letters, written over the seasons, by Flavien, a young teenager convalescing with his grandparents in La Roche sur le Buis around 1920.

This new museum lets visitors discover what rural life was like in the past, through a permanent exhibition of farm implements and objects from everyday life in the Baronnies.

The museum is named after a Baronnies painter, Joseph-Fortuné Layraud (1833-1913), who was born in La Roche sur le Buis and won the Grand Prix de Rome for painting in 1863. It occupies the former chapel of the white penitents or Notre-Dame des sept douleurs.

This brotherhood of piety and charity, founded by preacher brothers in Buis les Baronnies, appeared in La Roche towards the end of the 17th century and ended with the death of the last penitent.

In 1988, the chapel, restored by the association "Les amis du Buis et des Baronnies", became the Joseph-Fortuné Layraud Museum, adjoining the old cemetery. These two places perpetuate a memory: that of a village that knows how to draw on its past to create its present.