Université Paul Valéry. Musée des moulages, University cast museum on the Route de Mende campus, Montpellier, France

The Musée des Moulages of Paul Valéry University is a university cast museum on the Route de Mende campus, entered at the campus edge. Its long, low building has a continuous glazed facade divided by dark brown framing, with a pale beige roof band on thin posts. Inside, white plaster casts of classical figures stand on black rectangular bases of varying heights, among them a kneeling muscular male on a stepped plinth, a reclining figure on a flat slab, and draped and helmeted upright statues, lit by lamps on tall black metal stands near tall windows.

The museum was inaugurated on 23 May 1890, for the sixth centenary of the University of Montpellier, after the university began assembling casts in 1888 on the model of Bordeaux's museum. Ferdinand Castets, dean of the faculty of letters, led the project with funds from the Ministry of Public Instruction, the city and donors. It later served as a model for the Lyon museum, opened in June 1899.

The museum began as a teaching collection for art history and archaeology students, modelled on the one in Bordeaux. Its medieval section comes from the 1904 purchase of Canon Charles-Joseph Didelot's casts of French works, and in the 1920s this material supported Augustin Fliche's teaching of medieval archaeology. A cast of the Delphi Charioteer arrived in 1897-1898, months after the original was found.

The museum sits at the entrance of the Paul-Valéry University campus on the route de Mende site. Tram line 5 serves it, with the Université Paul Valéry stop about 300 metres away. The building's facade is a continuous glazed wall divided by dark brown framing, with a pale beige roof band above.

Montpellier's cast collection is the only one of its kind in France that has operated continuously within a university since its founding, while comparable collections in Bordeaux and Lyon did not endure. Its casts were also used as the model for the Lyon museum, opened in June 1899.