Situated on a former coal mine, the museum is scheduled to open in 2008, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, right, announced in Lens on Monday.
In 1976, the Anthracite Heritage Center, "a museum of coal mining things, asked if it could borrow the head," according to the AP.
President François Hollande of France inaugurated the first regional branch of the Louvre on Tuesday, a museum set atop a former coal mining yard in the depressed, postindustrial city of Lens.
Saint-Étienne, in southeast France, raised taxes twice, reduced by three-fourths a plan to renovate a museum commemorating the region's extinct coal mining industry, and cancelled a tram line.
A museum and tourist stop document the Frank Slide and the region's coal mining history.
Until the late 1950s coal mining was the city's economic mainstay; its importance is shown by the mining college, the geologic and mining museums, the mining research institute, and the headquarters building of the miners' trade union, insurance, and cooperative organizations.
Open Mondays, and Thursdays through Saturdays, 9 30 A.M. to 5 30 P.M. ANTHRACITE COAL MINING MUSEUM, 9 Dock Street, Lansford, (717) 645-7174.
The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum, a collection of coal mining artifacts, dioramas, old photos and other mementoes, is next door; across the street is the restored Coal Miners Memorial Theater; and up the hill the Benham School House Bed & Breakfast puts up guests in a former elementary and high school that still has lockers in the hallways.
See mining and coal mining.
