Calvet Museum

Avignon, France

La Fondation Calvet is an art foundation in Avignon, named for Esprit Calvet, who left his collections and library to it in 1810. The foundation maintains several museums and a two libraries, with support from the town. The original legacies of paintings, archaeological items, coins and medals, and medieval sculpture have been added to by many other legacies, and a significant deposit of works of art from the Louvre. The archaeological collections and medieval sculpture are now housed separately in the 'Musée Lapidaire' - once the chapel of the Jesuit College. The main museum is in an 18th-century city mansion, to which modern buildings have been added; the Library bequeathed by Calvet, and the important collection of over 12,000 coins and medals, have moved to a different location in the city.

In Avignon there are six museums:

  • Bibliothèque Calvet, the main library, housed since 1986 in part of what was once a cardinal's palace, the Livrée Ceccano
  • Musée Calvet, the main art gallery, housed in an 18th-century city mansion (a hôtel particulier), the Hôtel de Villeneuve-Martignan
  • Médaillier Calvet, a collection of coins and medals
  • Musée Lapidaire, a collection of sculptures and archeological finds, housed in what was once the chapel of a Jesuit college
  • Museum et Bibliothèque Requien, a natural history museum
  • Musée du Petit Palais, a collection of medieval and renaissance paintings
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Category: Museums in France

Rating

4.4/5 (based on Google user reviews)

User Reviews

Juan Pablo Aguirre (2 years ago)
Is not a big museum in terms of size but what is inside is amazing, recommend !! When I went it was free.
RnG Gall (2 years ago)
Lovely museum with art and sculptures. There was no charge when we were there 4/22
Douglas Scheider (3 years ago)
Free when we visited. Pretty cool little museum with statues and paintings. A lot of religious type people falling on each other or looking at the sky art, but there's a couple of remarkable pieces and there are much worse ways to spend an hour or two on a hot day. Cool building, too
Laurent Derijck (3 years ago)
Pretty museum in an old palace, with a good collection of old paintings, some more modern, local painters, few antiques and sculptures. Not too big, free and we'll arranged! To visit!
Kimberly Birdsall (3 years ago)
Fabulous free collection, very diverse. Everything from Egyptian sarcophagi to Dutch masterpieces to 20th century French art. Plus in a grand mansion venue.
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