Prisonnières

Exhibition from 17 September to 13 December 2026

As the Great War ended, every Parisian knew the grim facade of the Saint-Lazare prison, in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Behind the crumbling walls of this former convent, women were punished and cared for.

The only women's prison in Paris, it held as many as more than a thousand inmates: those awaiting trial, women serving short sentences, prostitutes who had broken the regulations, and women suffering from syphilis.

The latter were treated in the special infirmary, a true hospital-prison. The fate of this institution, often compared to leprosy at the heart of the capital, was decided in the 1920s, years marked by repressive pro-natalist policy and the anxiety over the "venereal peril".

In 1932 the prison closed before being partly demolished. The infirmary, first converted into a health home for prostitutes, now houses the Françoise-Sagan media library.

The exhibition sets out to make this history visible and tangible, though the current sites retain few traces of it. Through images, books, archives and objects drawn from the collections of many institutions, the route revisits the final years of the prison.

It begins outdoors, on the Square Alban Satragne, where large-format photographs show the former prison within its urban setting.

The route continues inside the media library, where it revisits the final years of the prison, the many gazes directed at the female prisoners and what they reveal about the condition of women at the time, but also the faint traces they left themselves: writings, graffiti, handprints bearing witness to the lives of these shadows of history.

The exhibition takes place across two sites: the Square Alban Satragne and the Médiathèque Françoise Sagan. The project was initiated by the association Histoire et vies du 10e and supported by the Mairie du 10e arrondissement.