Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille, Art museum in Palais Longchamp, Marseille, France
The Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille is an art museum housed in the left wing of the Palais Longchamp, a grand 19th-century building in the 4th arrondissement of Marseille. The collection covers paintings, drawings, and sculptures by European artists from the 16th to the early 20th century.
The museum was founded in 1801, making it one of the oldest art museums in France. It moved to the Palais Longchamp in 1869, when the building was newly completed, and has remained there ever since.
The museum sits inside one of the city's most recognizable buildings, and the grand rooms give the paintings and sculptures a lot of space to breathe. Visitors often linger in the galleries dedicated to French and Italian works from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The museum is easy to find inside the Palais Longchamp and can be reached on foot from the surrounding park. Allow at least a couple of hours to see the collection without rushing.
Auguste Rodin personally donated one of his sculptures, La Méditation, to the museum, which was unusual for a regional institution at the time. This kind of direct gift from a leading artist helped shape the collection in a way that no purchase could.
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