Exposition « Stanilas Bonfils, itinéraires d’un naturaliste à la Belle Époque »

Born in Menton in 1823, Stanislas Bonfils was a musician in the Carabinieri corps of the Principality of Monaco, to which Menton belonged from 1838 to 1843. In 1860, the year in which Menton became part of France, he was appointed syndic of seafarers, a post he held until 1878. Stanislas Bonfils had been an amateur naturalist since the age of 35. A lover of his home town, he was a self-taught enthusiast of archaeology, prehistory and the natural sciences. According to Commander Octobon, Stanislas had been visiting the Rochers Rouges since the age of ten, collecting "limpets and sea urchins with his father, a sea captain, and even scratching the earth". Curator of the Menton municipal museum from 1878 to 1906, he then retired to Nice, where he died in 1909. Stanislas Bonfils married Marie-Louise Fornari in 1859. They had three children. His research led him to build up two kinds of collections: one, which was practically destroyed during the last war, consisted largely of the fauna of the Menton basin, a very large herbarium and samples of all the fossils and rocks in the region. The second collection consisted of the products of the prehistoric excavations he carried out in the Grimaldi caves. This too suffered greatly during the moves. Stanislas Bonfils worked mainly in the 4th cave, known as "Barma Grande", where he found the "2nd Menton Man" in 1884. All that remains today is the skull and lower limbs, along with some flint fragments, on display at the Musée de Préhistoire Régionale in Menton.

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