Bernard Magrez Cultural Institute
Neoclassical eighteenth-century mansion turned contemporary art house behind wrought-iron gates.
This guide to the Bernard Magrez Cultural Institute in Bordeaux opens with an odd question about the wrought-iron gates in front of you and a bottle of whisky that never touched Scotland. It traces the mansion from 1773, when bookseller brothers Jacques and Antoine Labottiere built it as a bid for aristocratic standing, through bankruptcy in the Revolution and a string of later owners including a dance hall entrepreneur, a mayor and the Jesuits. It then follows Bernard Magrez, who started out selling wine door to door before a fake-Scotch brand made his fortune, back to this ruined address. Stand in the courtyard and you're looking at several very different Bordeaux fortunes stacked on one plot.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.