Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, Lyon, France

The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon is housed near place des Terreaux in a former Benedictine convent of the 17th and 18th centuries. It is one of the largest art museums in France. Its collections range from ancient Egypt antiquities to the Modern art period and make the museum one of the most important in Europe.

The paintings department has European paintings of 14th- to mid-20th-century paintings. They are arranged chronologically and by major schools in 35 rooms. At the heart of the abbey's former cloister is now a municipal garden, right in the centre of the town, on the peninsula. It is decorated with several 19th century's statues.

Ancient Egypt is the main theme of the museum's antiquities department, due to the historic importance of egyptology in Lyon, animated by men like Victor Loret, whose family gave over 1000 objects to the museum in 1954. From 1895, the musée du Louvre provided nearly 400 objects (unguent vases, funerary figurines etc.) to form the foundation of the department.

References:

Wikipedia

Museums in France

User Reviews

Philippa Rasidi (55 days ago)
Three levels and a garden of gorgeous paintings, sculptures and artefacts! They have a beautiful cafe / restaurant over looking the garden. Would recommend going in the hottest part of the day and stopping after the first two floors for lunch then finishing on the 3 floor with paintings by Renoir and Monet!

Laura C. (2 months ago)
Stunning place I had a great visit, the pieces presented don’t have much space restriction so you can look the sculptures and painting really close! They give you a map and the rooms are numbered so you don’t get lost and it makes sure that you’ll see everything After entering, before getting into the museum itself there’s a cute little garden thing that’s is pretty atmospheric and relaxing with some sculptures sprinkled on it :)

Maurizio Nasi (2 months ago)
A beautiful museum, with variety of pieces of art, hosted in a beautiful building. Not so many masterpiece, but very pleasant to stroll with a reasonable price. The garden is very nice and there are lockers accessible to everybody which are convenient.

Charles Taylor (13 months ago)
Well laid out and spacious. Too much to see in a couple of hours, but the ticket allows to come back later on the same day. The lighting could be improved a bit on some paintings as the frame casts a bit if a shadow.

Lars de V. (2 years ago)
Has everything a large museum has (time periods) but on a smaller scale.

Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings

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Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village. Settlement here began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. At the centre of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 10 metres. Its interior is divided into sections by upright slabs. The tower features two skins of drystone walls, with stone-floored galleries in between. These are accessed by steps. Stone ledges suggest that there was once an upper storey with a timber floor. The roof would have been thatched, surrounded by a wall walk linked by stairs to the ground floor. The broch features two hearths and a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it. It is thought to have some religious significance, relating to an Iron Age cult of the underground.

The remains of the central tower are up to 3.6 metres high, and the stone walls are up to 4.1 metres thick. The tower was likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area but also served as a last resort for the village in case of an attack.

The broch continued to be inhabited while it began to collapse and the original structures were altered. The cistern was filled in and the interior was repartitioned. The ruin visible today reflects this secondary phase of the broch's use.

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut out of the rock with stone ramparts, encircling an area of around 45 metres diameter. The remains of numerous small stone dwellings with small yards and sheds can be found between the inner ditch and the tower. These were built after the tower, but were a part of the settlement's initial conception. A 'main street' connects the outer entrance to the broch. The settlement is the best-preserved of all broch villages.

Pieces of a Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD were found here, lending weight to the record that a 'King of Orkney' submitted to Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 AD.

At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times. By that time the broch was not used anymore and some of its stones were reused to build smaller dwellings on top of the earlier buildings. Until about the 8th century, the site was just a single farmstead.

In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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