Millions have been to the converted pool in the depressed town of Roubaix since it opened as a museum. Now a major expansion secures its future

When La Piscine Museum opened in one of the poorest towns in France’s depressed northern post-industrial belt, the number-crunchers predicted 60,000 visitors in a good year.

From the start, there was something magical about the art deco swimming pool with its intricate mosaic tiles and enamel brick shower cubicles, all bathed in the gentle light of its sunburst stained-glass windows. Around the poolside, statues and sculptures were reflected in the water, like frozen bathers about to take a dip, among them Hope, Faith, Charity and Tenderness by Alfred Boucher, a friend of Auguste Rodin.

But who would come to Roubaix unless they had to?

As it turned out, 200,000 came in 2001, the year it opened. And they kept coming. When visitors swelled to 250,000, and the Journal des Arts named it France’s best museum outside Paris, it seemed that La Piscine would become the victim of its own success, fast running out of space for the public and the exhibits.

Instead it embarked on a two-year, €9m (£7.9m) extension into a neighbouring former mill factory, to house a growing collection that sets out to confound the distinction between industrial and applied art and the beaux arts.

Preparing for La Piscine’s grand reopening on Saturday, the museum director, Bruno Gaudichon, believes this eclectic mix reflects the spirit of Roubaix itself, where La Piscine has long been the pride of the town.

“Roubaix was deeply hurt by the decline in the textile industry, and unemployment is still high in this area. Given this situation, the museum plays an important social role,” he told the Observer during a guided tour of the extended museum. “Having this magnificent pool has certainly helped its success and we have people come from everywhere, but many visitors are local, because La Piscine is deeply rooted in the memories of people in Roubaix.

“Local people visit and tell us they came here as children to swim. Some even remember their favourite changing room. I saw one man walk in and burst into tears. He saw the pool and it brought back all those childhood memories for him.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The baths in 1932, the year they opened. Photograph: Philippe Caron/Sygma via Getty Images

Roubaix lies in a swath of northern France that boomed, mainly thanks to a proliferation of mills and mines in the region, at the turn of the 20th century, but it has struggled with closures and de-industrialisation since the 1970s. Today more than 40% of the town’s 96,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 30%, three times the national average.

In a bleak economic landscape, La Piscine Museum of Art and Industry has emerged as an oasis of hope, culture and regeneration. The pool and municipal baths opened in 1932, commissioned by the Socialist mayor Jean-Baptiste Lebas, later a second world war resistance fighter who died in a Nazi concentration camp, to encourage hygiene and sport among the mill workers and combat the spread of tuberculosis. It remained popular for decades, but closed in 1985, crumbling, riddled with damp and needing major repairs.

A new swimming pool was built, but Roubaix councillors were reluctant to order the demolition of La Piscine and, in 1990, decided to transform the by then dilapidated art deco building into a museum while retaining the spirit of its original design.

The architect Jean-Paul Philippon, who transformed Paris’s Gare d’Orsay into a museum, was chosen to oversee La Piscine’s metamorphosis in 2001. He has also supervised the recent extension, which has created an entire new wing, much of which was paid for by donations.

“The idea of a public pool and baths was a very social one and a mixture of people from different classes from all over the region came here to learn to swim. The original idea was to restore the place and keep the pool and water, but make the volume smaller,” Philippon said. “The principle of architectural work is to have an eye on the past, present and future.”

Today the museum’s core collection – figurative works from the 19th and 20th centuries – includes sculptures by Giacometti, Rodin, Claudel and Picasso, as well as paintings, ceramics, glass, furniture, jewellery, fabrics and fashion exhibits.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Le Grand Cerf by François Pompon on display at La Piscine. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

The reopening features temporary exhibitions centred on Pablo Picasso’s famed protest statue Man with a Sheep, and Giacometti’s Portrait of a Hero, but both Gaudichon and Philippon admit the scene-stealer is a magnificent watercolour panorama depicting the opening of Roubaix’s town hall in 1911.

“It was found in an attic at the town hall rolled up and being used to stop leaks in the roof. And we should be grateful that it was being used in that way, because otherwise it would probably have been thrown out,” Gaudichon said.

Gaudichon, who came to Roubaix in 1989 to oversee La Piscine’s renaissance and has never left, does, however, have one regret: that he cannot persuade David Hockney, famous for his swimming-pool paintings, to exhibit at La Piscine.

“We’ve written several times, but never had any reply. It is a pity, because his work would be perfect here, but also because he is from Bradford, which is twinned with Roubaix.

“We would have liked him here for the 10th anniversary or for this reopening, but who knows?”, he said. “Maybe the 20th anniversary? If we can get a reply.”