Source: the venue’s website, checked on 04/11/2026.
In Guise, in the Aisne, the industrialist Jean-Baptiste André Godin built a Social Palace for his workers, with its schools, its theatre and its laundry and swimming pool. From 1880 to 1968 a workers’ cooperative owned the factory and the flats, some of which are still lived in today.
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A reader of Charles Fourier, Godin founded the Cooperative Association of Capital and Labour in 1880 with fourteen employees and gave it the factory and the palace, 4.6 million francs. Three quarters of net profits were shared between wages and capital, so the company passed little by little into the workers’ hands. A team sees here what a truly shared decision takes.
The site opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5.30 pm. For a seminar, the guided tour lasts 30 minutes, an hour or an hour and a half, with a place often closed to the public and a chosen theme, from management to the place of women. The theatre seats 346, other rooms 50. Take the train to Saint-Quentin, then the coach to the Familistère, 25 km away.
Photo credits : jsmaur (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) ; Fab5669 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Jpcuvelier (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Velvet (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) ; JackyM59 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
We design and lead a learning expedition that goes through this place. You can also design it yourself with Agent A\lex.
Agent A\lex
