Musée des arts et métiers traditionnels (Traditional Arts and Crafts)

The Salles-la-Source museum is based in the magnificent buildings that made up the former spinning factory and fabric workshop. The architecture is also of interest: built with limestone and volcanic ash and a series of combination stone and wood columns that support a hull-shaped framework.

The museum is dedicated to the arts and traditional crafts of the Rouergue and offers a voyage to the heart of the traditional local society from the nineteenth to the twentieth century :

• The huge room on the underground floor whose ceiling is held up by two stone columns, houses the ancient machines using water and wind energy : presses, an oil and flour mill, a hammer, a sawmill…
• The ground floor is dedicated to the arts and crafts linked to minerals : stone, clay, iron, copper, zinc, brass, water and fire.
• The first floor illustrates the relation between man and the landscape : agriculture, tree and shrub cultivation, wood working (clog making, coopering, carpentry, wood turning, furniture making etc.).
• The  second floor deals with the animal world : hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, tanning, copper crafts, Roquefort cheese production, wool, etc. a reconstructed spinning wheel dating to the nineteenth century (a threshing machine, an assortment of frames, the spinning trade, the weaving trade …)