Museum sights in France
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Dalí Espace Montmartre
More than 300 works by Salvador Dalí (1904–89), the flamboyant Catalan surrealist printmaker, painter, sculptor and self-promoter, are on display at this surrealist-style basement museum located just west of place du Tertre. The collection includes Dalí’s strange sculptures (most in reproduction), lithographs, many of his illustrations and furniture (including the famous ‘lips’ sofa).
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Natural History Museum
Can't make it out of town? Take a break from the cultural circuit and get in touch with nature at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Alpine flora and fauna, a 'carnival of insects' and an aquarium are housed in an imposing neoclassical building overlooking leafy Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Garden).
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Trompe l'Œil Portrait
To peek at Avignon's nine popes in their fashionable garbs of the day, seek out their trompe l'œil portrait on the side of the conseil général (general council) building.
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Bayeux Tapestry
Undoubtedly the world's most celebrated embroidery, the misnamed Bayeux Tapestry (it's actually wool thread embroidered onto linen cloth) vividly recounts the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Divided into 58 scenes briefly captioned in almost-readable Latin, the main narrative – told from an unashamedly Norman perspective – fills up the centre of the canvas, while religious allegories and depictions of daily life in the 11th century unfold along the borders. The final showdown at the Battle of Hastings is depicted in truly graphic fashion, complete with severed limbs and decapitated heads (along the bottom of scene 52). Halley's Comet, which blazed across …
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Hôtel des Invalides
A 500m-long expanse of lawn known as the Esplanade des Invalides separates Faubourg St-Germain from the Eiffel Tower area. At the southern end of the esplanade, laid out between 1704 and 1720, is the final resting place of Napoleon, the man many French people consider to be the nation’s greatest hero.
Hôtel des Invalides was built in the 1670s by Louis XIV to provide housing for 4000 invalides (disabled war veterans). On 14 July 1789, a mob forced its way into the building and, after fierce fighting, seized 32,000 rifles before heading on to the prison at Bastille and the start of the French Revolution.
North of Hôtel des Invalides’ main courtyard, in the so-called
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Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux
Undoubtedly the world's most celebrated piece of embroidery, the Bayeux Tapestry is housed in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux . Upstairs there's a short historical film and a full-size reconstruction of the tapestry, but you'll be better off skipping both and heading downstairs to see the real thing. An audioguide is included in the admission price.
The tapestry recounts the story of the Norman conquest of England in 58 remarkable scenes, briefly captioned in Latin, and all told from an unashamedly Norman perspective. Scholars believe that the 70m-long tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William's half-brother, to commemorate the opening of Bayeux cat…
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Palais de Chaillot & Jardins du Trocadéro
The two curved, colonnaded wings of the Palais de Chaillot, built for the 1937 World Exhibition held in Paris, and the terrace in between them afford an exceptional panorama of the Jardins du Trocadéro, the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.
The palace's western wing contains two interesting museums. The Musée de l'Homme focuses on human development, ethnology, population and population growth; it's a branch of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle. There are also excellent scientific and ethnographical temporary exhibits on everything from the personality and the brains to the Inuit people of Greenland.
The Musée de la Marine focuses on France's naval adventures from the 17…
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Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
Lodged inside another of Albi's impressive red-brick landmarks, the Palais de la Berbie (built in the early Middle Ages for the town's archbishop), this wonderful museum offers a comprehensive overview of the life and career of Albi's most celebrated son. The museum owns over 500 original works by Toulouse-Lautrec (the largest collection in France outside the Musée d'Orsay), spanning the artist's development from his early impressionist influences en route to his celebrated poster art and Parisian brothel scenes.
Pride of place goes to two versions of the Au Salon de la rue des Moulins, hung side-by-side to illustrate the artist's subtly different technique. Elsewhere aro…
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Palais Fesch – Musée des Beaux-Arts
One of the island's must-sees, this superb museum reopened in 2010 after extensive renovation works. Established by Napoléon's uncle, it has France's largest collection of Italian paintings outside the Louvre. Mostly the works of minor or anonymous 14th- to 19th-century artists, there are also canvases by Titian, Fra Bartolomeo, Veronese, Botticelli and Bellini. Look out for La Vierge à l'Enfant Soutenu par un Ange (Mother and Child Supported by an Angel), one of Botticelli's masterpieces. Portrait de l'Homme au Gant (Portrait of the Gloved Man) by Titian matches another in the Louvre. The museum also houses temporary exhibitions. Within the Chapelle Impériale (Imperia…
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Musée Océanographique
Stuck dramatically to the edge of a cliff since 1910, the world-renowned Musée Océanographique - a Prince Albert I (1848-1922) creation - is a stunner. Its centrepiece is the 7.5m-long coral reef, with vivid tropical fish on one side and deep-sea predators on the other. Ninety smaller tanks contain a dazzling 450 Mediterranean and tropical species, sustained by 250,000L of freshly pumped sea water per day.
The Whale Room, filled with cetacean skeletons and pickled embryos, and fanciful seabird-covered chandeliers, mosaic floors and oak doorframes carved into marine shapes at every turn complete the mesmerising ensemble. Kids will love the tactile basin; tickets for the …
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Musée Jacquemart-André
The Jacquemart-André Museum, founded by collector Édouard André and his portraitist wife Nélie Jacquemart, is in an opulent mid-19th-century residence on one of Paris’ posher avenues. It has furniture, tapestries and enamels, but is most noted for its paintings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck and Italian Renaissance works by Bernini, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Donatello, Mantegna, Tintoretto, Titian and Uccello. Don’t miss the Jardin d’Hiver (Winter Garden), with its marble statuary, tropical plants and double-helix marble staircase. Just off it is the delightful fumoir (the erstwhile smoking room) filled with exotic objects collected by Jacquemart during her travels. The…
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Musée Vivant du Cheval
The Grand Château’s Grandes Écuries (Grand Stables), built between 1719 and 1740 to house 240 horses and over 400 hounds, are next to Chantilly’s famous Hippodrome (Racecourse), inaugurated in 1834. Today the stables house the Musée Vivant du Cheval, whose 30 pampered and spoiled equines live in luxurious wooden stalls built by Louis-Henri de Bourbon, the seventh Prince de Condé, who was convinced he would be reincarnated as a horse (hence the extraordinary grandeur). Displays, which were under renovation at the time of research, cover everything from riding equipment to horse toys to portraits, drawings and sculptures of famous nags. The last tickets for the museu…
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Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation
In the courtyard in front of the Musée Municipal de l'Évêché, an excavation project has revealed the archaeological remains of buildings that once occupied the site, including some Gallo-Roman ruins. Eventually it's hoped that the remains will be open to the public, but while the work's going on, the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation has been moved to the Chapelle de la Règle, behind the botanical gardens.
It's worth taking a stroll over - the museum contains some moving accounts of the exploits of the Resistance and the suffering of deportees during the war, supported by some fascinating wartime memorabilia, including photos, letters, diaries and milita…
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Musée des Confluences
The incredible Musée des Confluences, a spacey science- and society-focused museum is as much stunning piece of contemporary architecture as museum. It is housed in a futuristic steel-and-glass transparent crystal topped by a floating 'cloud'. Inside, three of the 10 vast exhibition areas grapple with eternal questions like 'Where do we come from?', 'Where are we going?' and 'Who are we and what are we doing?'.
Remaining spaces home in on hot issues of the future - cloning, genetically modified organisms, global warming and so on. Two auditoriums, a café, restaurants, shop and riverside garden complete the ambitious cultural ensemble, the creation of world-famous Austri…
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Musée des Beaux-Arts
In a resplendent 1878 belle époque villa, the Musée des Beaux-Arts displays works by Fragonard, Monet, Sisley and Rodin, as well as an excellent collection of Dufy works.
Fauvist appreciators will relish a roomful of Raoul Dufy's works. Also impressive are sculptures by Rodin, and some late impressionist pieces by Bonnard, Monet and Sisley. Local lads Jules Chéret (1836-1932), the 'Father of the Poster', and Alexis Mossa (1844-1926), who painted truly hideous symbolist works, also feature. The latter is more famous for adding wildly decorated floats to the Nice Carnival than for his watercolours. From the bus station, take bus 38 to the Musée Chéret stop outside.
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Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine
Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, in the Palais de Chaillot’s eastern wing, is a mammoth 23,000 sq metres spread over three floors devoted to French architecture and heritage. Exhibits include 350 wood and plaster casts of cathedral portals, columns and altars originally created for the 1878 Exposition Universelle. The highlight is the light-filled ground floor, which contains a beautiful collection of 350 plaster and wood casts (moulages) of cathedral portals, columns and gargoyles, and replicas of murals and stained glass originally created for the 1878 Exposition Universelle. The views of the Eiffel Tower from the windows are equally monumental.
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Musée de la Défense
A trip to this space located just below the Espace-Info information centre is a real highlight. Drawings, architectural plans and scale models trace the development of the district from the 17th century to the present day. Especially fascinating are the projects that were never built: the 750m-tall Tour Tourisme TV (1961) by the Polak brothers; Hungarian-born artist Nicholas Schöffer’s unspeakable Tour Lumière Cybernetique (1965), a ‘Cybernetic Light Tower’ that, at 324m, would stand at the same height as the Eiffel Tower; and the Tour sans Fin, a ‘Never-Ending Tower’ that would be 425m high, but just 39m in diameter. Ouch.
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Musée d’Art et d’Histoire
To the southwest of the basilica is the Museum of Art & History, housed in a restored Carmelite convent founded in 1625 and later presided over by Louise de France, the youngest daughter of Louis XV. Displays include reconstructions of the Carmelites’ cells, an 18th-century apothecary and, in the archaeology section, items found during excavations around the St-Denis Basilica. There’s a section on modern art, with a collection of work by a local son, the surrealist artist Paul Éluard (1895–1952), as well as an important collection of politically charged posters, cartoons, lithographs and paintings from the 1871 Paris Commune.
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Centre de la Vieille Charité
Marseille architect and sculptor Pierre Puget (1620–94) was born in the house opposite 10 rue du Petit Puits, and designed the arcaded courtyard of the Centre de la Vieille Charité, initially built as a charity shelter for the town’s poor, the stunning arched pink-stone courtyard now houses Marseille’s beautiful Musée d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne (Museum of Mediterranean Archeology) and Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens & Amérindiens (Museum of African, Oceanic & American Indian Art). The latter contains a striking collection of masks from the Americas, Africa and the Pacific.
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Appartements des Princes
The Petit Château contains the Appartements des Princes, which are straight ahead from the entrance. The highlight here is the Cabinet des Livres, a repository of 700 manuscripts and more than 30,000 volumes, including a Gutenberg Bible and a facsimile of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, an illuminated manuscript dating from the 15th century that illustrates the calendar year for both the peasantry and the nobility.
The chapel, to the left as you walk into the vestibule, has woodwork and stained-glass windows dating from the mid-16th century and was assembled by the duke in 1882.
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Musée Pasteur
Housed in the apartment where the famous chemist and bacteriologist spent the last seven years of his life (1888–95), a tour of this museum takes you through Pasteur’s private rooms, a hall with such odds and ends as gifts presented to him by heads of state and drawings he did as a young man. After Pasteur’s death, the French government wanted to entomb his remains in the Panthéon, but his family, acting in accordance with his wishes, obtained permission to have him buried at his institute. The great savant lies in the basement crypt. Note that you will need to show a passport or ID card to gain entrance.
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Fine Arts Museum
Lille's world-renowned Fine Arts Museum , built from 1885 to 1892, has a truly first-rate collection of 15th- to 20th-century paintings, including works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Manet. On the ground floor, there's exquisite porcelain and faïence, much of it of local provenance, while in the basement you'll find classical archaeology, medieval statuary and intricate 18th-century models of the fortified cities of northern France and Belgium.
Tickets are valid for the whole day. Information sheets are available in each hall. An audioguide is planned for the recently-reorganised paintings section.
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Musée Cognacq-Jay
This museum in the Hôtel de Donon brings together oil paintings, pastels, sculpture, objets d’art, jewellery, porcelain and furniture from the 18th century assembled by Ernest Cognacq (1839–1928), founder of La Samaritaine department store (now undergoing a protracted overhaul) and his wife Louise Jay. Although Cognacq appreciated little of his collection, boasting to all who would listen that he had never visited the Louvre and was only acquiring collections for the status, the artwork and objets d’art give a pretty good idea of upper-class tastes during the Age of Enlightenment.
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Fine Arts Museum
In the Fine Arts Museum objects illustrating the history of Angers are gorgeously displayed on the ground floor. Upstairs, the paintings - none of them consciousness-changing but many of them excellent - include some compelling Italian works from the first half of the 1800s.
Here you will find the dramatic, Dante-inspired Paolo et Francesca by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, in which Francesca's elderly and deformed husband, a homicidal look on his face, discovers his wife in the arms of his younger brother Paoli (in one of the two red rooms). Audioguides are being prepared.
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Galeries du Panthéon Bouddhique du Japon et de la Chine
The Guimet Museum of Asiatic Arts is France’s foremost repository for Asian art and has sculptures, paintings, objets d’art and religious articles from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Tibet, Cambodia, China, Japan and Korea. Part of the collection, comprising Buddhist paintings and sculptures brought to Paris in 1876 by collector Émile Guimet, is housed in the Galeries du Panthéon Bouddhique du Japon et de la Chine in the sumptuous Hôtel Heidelbach a short distance to the north. Don’t miss it's wonderful Japanese garden.
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