![[Flag of Monnaie de Paris]](../images/f/fr_mint.gif)
Last modified: 2024-04-20 by olivier touzeau
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Flag of Monnaie de Paris - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 18 April 2022
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The Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint) is the government-owned institution responsible for producing France's coins. It is the world's oldest continuously running minting institution, and the oldest French institution still in operation, since it was founded in 864 with the Edict of Pistres.
Charles II the Bold indeed established nine workshops in his kingdom. This privilege was confirmed and increased by all his successors, who aimed at keeping the power of minting coins out of the hands of the feudal civil and religious lords. The number of workshops varied with time, depending of the kingdom's needs and wealth. Minted with a hammer, the coins experienced a lot of variation. At the end of the 17th century, coin minting was optimized and standardized by a new technique using a pendulum. In 1691, there were still 27 minting workshops in France, whose number was progressively reduced to only three (Bordeaux, Paris, Strasbourg) in 1870, and eventually one (Paris) in 1878.
In 1958, General de Gaulle approved a report recommending the transfer of industrial coin production out of Paris, mostly because the preservation of the historical building would be endangered by the modernization of the workshop. The site of Pessac (Gironde) was selected in 1965; the brand new factory, designed by the Salier-Courtois-Lajus architecture agency, was inaugurated on 1 September 1973. The Pessac factory mints now one billion of coins every year, half euro coins, including those for Malta, Cyprus, Monaco and Andorra, and half foreign currencies.
Today the original facility in Paris, while still operational, functions primarily as a museum and is home to a collection of many ancient coins. Monnaie de Paris acquired its autonomy and was granted legal personality by law no. 2006–1666 in 2007; it is an Établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial (EPIC; public institution of an industrial and commercial nature).
Olivier Touzeau and Ivan Sache, 7 May 2022
The flag of the Monnaie de Paris can be observed in Pessac, white with logo: photo (2015), photo (2017), photo (2019), photo (2022).
Olivier Touzeau, 18 April 2022
The logo features the facade of the monumental Hôtel des Monnaies.
The oldest known mint workshop was located on City Island; it was then transferred to the present-day's Court of Justice and eventually close to the Louvre, in Mint Street. Deemed too small and not suited for modern technologies, the workshop was transferred upon order of Louis XV on the left bank of the Seine. On the site left vacant by the former Hôtel de Conti, destroyed in 1769, architect Jacques-Denis Antoine (1733-1801) designed the monumental Royal Mint Manufacture. The building had its cornerstone set up on 30 Paris 1771 and was inaugurated on 20 December 1775. This was the first building of significance erected in Paris during the reign of Louis XV. [source: Official website]
Ivan Sache, 7 May 2022
