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The Matrice Archives

Une découverte de l'histoire des villes autour des jumelages

Fifteen cities across France are brought together within the Matrice, a “global network of human-scale cities”. These cities share common values and a shared ambition — but also a shared history.

Each month, the archives of three of these cities invite you to explore an iconic visual document built around a shared theme — a glimpse into their histories, which have far more in common than one might expect.

March 2026

February 2026

January 2026

Explore the archive services partnering within the Matrice

The Municipal Archives of Angoulême are among the City’s oldest public services. Their collections date back to the 14th century, at the time of the town’s refoundation by King Charles V, and have continued to grow over the past seven centuries. Since 1994, the Municipal Archives have been housed in a dedicated building separate from City Hall, offering the public a reading room as well as spaces for conferences and exhibitions. Digitised collections are available online via the City of Angoulême’s website.

Located at the confluence of the Rhône and the Durance rivers, Avignon is today a “human-scale” city with a population of 92,000. As early as the mid-14th century, under the reign of Pope Clement VI, the city was already home to 40,000 inhabitants. A papal state from 1348 onward, Avignon was not definitively annexed to France until 1791, when it became the prefecture of the Vaucluse department.

The Municipal Archives Department of Avignon was gradually established from 1984 onward. It is housed in the city’s former Mont-de-Piété. The 19-member team is structured into three departments—contemporary and digital archives, historical collections, and public engagement—responsible for managing and showcasing 7.5 linear kilometres of archival holdings, spanning from the Middle Ages to the present day.

While the City of Avignon Archives place a strong emphasis on public engagement, they are also deeply involved in expanding and enriching their collections. They are currently implementing an electronic records management system. The collection of privately held archives is particularly dynamic, with a strong focus on photography, architects’ archives, as well as thematic collecting initiatives developed in connection with exhibition projects.

Blois, a prefectural city with a population of 48,000, positions itself as a balanced hub between Tours and Orléans. The shared Archives Service of the City of Blois, Agglopolys and the CIAS du Blaisois has existed since 1975, although its name has evolved over time in line with successive waves of cooperation and the scope of its missions.
Located on the garden level of Blois City Hall (the former Bishop’s Palace), the service is made up of a Head of Service and two full-time archivists, for a total team of three, with the possibility in some years of welcoming an apprentice. Equipped with six archival storage rooms—two in the basement of City Hall and four in the basement of the building housing the departments of digital services, culture and sports along the Mail Clouseau—the service preserves just over two linear kilometres of archives, dating from 1276 to the present day.
The Archives Service also runs a dedicated website, where it regularly publishes news items, articles and exhibitions exploring the history of the local area: site internet.

Founded in 1984, the Municipal Archives of the City of Bourges merged in 2017 with those of the Bourges Plus Agglomeration Community to form a shared service. Comprising a permanent team of five archivists and one archival assistant, the service manages nearly two linear kilometres of archives spanning from the 13th to the 21st century.

Located in the Gibjoncs district in the north of Bourges, the Archives building is open to the public on Mondays and Tuesdays and offers an annual cultural programme aimed at the general public, with a particular focus on school and university audiences. The website (Archives municipales et communautaires) provides access not only to archival finding aids but also to past exhibitions.

The Archives municipales et communautaires de Châteauroux is located in the City Hall. The team is made up of four staff members: one archivist, two archival assistants and one administrative officer. The service preserves around 4 linear kilometres of archives across two repositories, one of which was recently opened in the rehabilitated former Banque de France branch building, now known as the Cité La Fayette.
Through an annual digitisation programme, many documents are available for consultation online via the Archives’ website.
As the cultural and heritage department of the City of Châteauroux and Châteauroux Métropole, the service is actively involved in joint projects with other local cultural institutions (the museum, conservatoire, media library and municipal school of fine arts). Since 2009, it has also developed cultural initiatives (exhibitions, publications, etc.) with Germany, within the framework of international relations led by the Franco-German twinning committee and Châteauroux’s twin city, Gütersloh (Germany, Westphalia).

Since 2022, these collaborations have expanded to include Gütersloh’s other twin cities — Grudziądz (Poland), Falun (Sweden) and Broxtowe (United Kingdom) — as part of the European C-City project.

The Centre de la Mémoire d’Issoudun, located within the municipal media library, is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of written heritage. It operates both as a municipal and intermunicipal archives service and as part of the city library’s heritage department.

Each year, the Memory Centre presents exhibitions and offers educational activities for schools as well as programmes for the general public. It is open year-round, from Tuesday to Saturday.

Since summer 2023, the Municipal and Intermunicipal Archives Service of La Rochelle has been housed in the new Olga de Saint-Affrique Archives building, located in the Mireuil district. Mutualised since January 2024, the service now manages over 4.1 linear kilometres of archives dating from the 13th century to the present day, originating from municipal and intermunicipal public services and institutions. It also collects private archives (family papers, associations, businesses, etc.).

The service’s eight staff members work daily to carry out the full range of archival missions, from advising and collecting to classification, preservation and public access. Equipped with an exhibition space and an educational room, the Archives regularly offer outreach and mediation activities, with the aim of sharing the richness and diversity of the heritage preserved with as wide an audience as possible. Part of the digitised collections and finding aids are available online (accessibles en ligne).

In Saint-Amand-Montrond, the Archives Service is staffed by a single archivist. Public access to the archives is provided at the municipal library, by appointment. Spread across several physical sites, the paper archives held by the service amount to 730 linear metres. Within this volume, records dating from before 1940 represent around 50 linear metres. In addition, there is an estimated backlog of 508 linear metres of paper archives still to be processed.
As document production is now largely digital, archival practices must also address electronic records. In 2025, the electronic archiving of the municipal archives is in the initial phase of implementation.


The Vierzon municipal archives are housed at two locations: the former Banque de France building for historical records dating from before 1945; and the iconic Société Française tractor factory for contemporary records.

Vierzon is unique in that it was administratively divided into four separate municipalities throughout the 19th century: Vierzon-Ville and Vierzon-Villages as early as 1790; Vierzon-Bourgneuf in 1887; and Vierzon-Forges in 1908. Reunification did not occur until 1937, forming the Vierzon we know today. The municipal archives therefore hold the same series of records for all four municipalities, which means many more hours of research in our local collection!
Every Friday, the city archivist posts an article on local history on the city’s Facebook page. A compilation of these articles is available on the city’s website.

Established on 1 October 2017, the shared Archives Service of Nevers Agglomeration is responsible for managing the archives of Nevers Agglomeration as well as those of the municipalities of Nevers and Varennes-Vauzelles. The service is staffed by a team of four professionals.
More than 3 kilometres of archives, spanning from 1220 to the present day, are preserved and available for consultation in the reading room, open from Tuesday to Thursday, at 1 rue Charles Roy in Nevers. Further information, contact details, and—soon—online archival inventories can be found on the service’s website (site internet).