Musée des Gueules Rouges, Mining museum in Tourves, France.

The Musée des Gueules Rouges is a mining museum in Tourves dedicated to bauxite extraction and displays original tools, photographs, and interactive exhibits about how minerals were removed from the ground. Visitors walk through a reconstructed mine gallery to experience what the work environment was like.

Bauxite was first extracted in the Var at Cabasse in 1873, and from 1886-1887 the Bayer patent and electrolysis made aluminium production possible on a large scale. Employment peaked in the early 1950s with 1,500 to 2,000 workers extracting 632,000 tonnes. The last mine in the Var basin closed at Cabasse in December 1989.

Miners were nicknamed "gueules rouges" for the red bauxite dust that stained their faces. The museum keeps their memory through recorded testimonies about the different trades, extraction techniques and how these changed over the 20th century. The visit ends at the lampisterie, the lamp room where miners collected their lamps before descending.

The museum sits between Marseille and Nice, making it accessible for visitors traveling through Provence. The reconstructed mine stays much cooler than the surface, so bringing a light jacket is helpful.

The museum's name comes from the miners' nickname, "gueules rouges", earned because bauxite dust reddened their faces. The building stands on the site of Tourves' former cooperative cellar, whose concrete vats now house the reconstructed gallery. The association of former Gueules rouges miners built that 900 m² gallery in 2008, before the museum itself opened in 2012.