Paris will soon have a Musée Guimard. The museum will be housed in the Hôtel Mezzara, an Art Nouveau masterpiece built in 1910 by Hector Guimard at 60 Rue Jean-de-la-Fontaine in the 16th arrondissement for Paul Mezzara, a textile industrialist of Venetian origin. The government, which owns this 750-square-meter private mansion, announced the news via a June 18 letter from the Regional Directorate of Public Finance for the Paris region. The letter was addressed to the two devoted enthusiasts who have spent the past seven years fighting to bring their ambitious project to life: Fabien Choné, president of the consulting and financing firm Fabelsi and its subsidiary Hector Guimard Diffusion, and Nicolas Horiot, president of the association Le Cercle Guimard, founded in 2003.
After two unsuccessful calls for tenders in 2021 and 2023, the government, which first considered selling this historic monument in 2015 for €7 million, eventually decided, following a third call for tenders launched on January 28, to sign a 50-year lease for heritage enhancement with Foncière Mezzara, a property company created by Fabelsi with investment from a public bank. In exchange for an annual fee, part of which is based on the museum's revenue, Fabelsi, which will handle all restoration work, will operate the future museum.
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