Musée des sapeurs-pompiers de Lyon, Firefighting museum in La Duchère district, Lyon, France.
Musée des sapeurs-pompiers de Lyon is a firefighting museum in the Duchère district that displays over 100 fire trucks, equipment, helmets, and rescue materials spanning more than 250 years of firefighting history. The collection shows how equipment and techniques evolved over time, documenting technological and operational changes across different eras.
The museum was founded in 1966 by the chief of the Lyon fire brigade, as a memorial to the eleven Lyon and Vienne firefighters killed in the Feyzin refinery disaster of 4 January 1966. In 1971 mayor Louis Pradel provided premises in La Duchère to display the collections. The collection was classified 'musée de France' in 2005, and since 2009 it has belonged to the Comité d'Animation Sociale et Culturelle du SDIS du Rhône.
The museum began as a memorial to the 4 January 1966 Feyzin refinery disaster, in which eleven Lyon and Vienne firefighters died. Its displays on daily life in the barracks cover alarm methods, bicycle units for house fires, extinguisher grenades, ceremonial uniforms and festivities. A large helmet collection opens onto firefighting practices elsewhere in the world.
The museum occupies a 1,200 m² exhibition space in La Duchère, in the 9th arrondissement of Lyon. The 160 intervention vehicles are shown only during the Journées du patrimoine; the rest of the collection is displayed indoors. Access to the building is via the raised walkway with metal railings, and the entrance doors are set in recesses above it.
The collection includes a national selection of firefighting helmets from the early 1800s along with pumps dating back to 1732. These unusually old objects demonstrate how long people have been developing organized systems to fight fire.
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