Musée d'Art de Toulon, Art Museum in Toulon, France

The Musée d'Art de Toulon occupies a neo-Renaissance building designed by Toulon architect Gaudensi Allar, with a U-shaped plan and two loggias of five round arches on the main block. The taller side wings have rusticated bases, corner chainings and an attic storey with square windows and enamelled medallions. A metal fence on a low stone wall runs along the road.

The museum opened in 1888 as a combined institution housing art collections, natural history materials, and a library under one roof. This founding reflects the educational vision of the late 1800s.

The building was shared from the start: the museum occupied the north wing, the library the south. Six enamelled medallions by Émile Hugoulin on the museum side honour Toulon-born artists, among them Vincent Courdouan (1810–1893), whose Provençal landscapes are in the collection, alongside Fragonard.

The museum occupies a U-shaped building set back from the boulevard, with a small French-style garden and a fountain in front of the facades. Renovation work carried out between 2018 and 2021 tripled the exhibition space and improved conditions for the permanent collections. Visitors enter through the courtyard inside the U, where two busts face each other.

The building was designed to house three institutions: the art museum, a natural history museum and the library. On the attic level, twelve enamelled ceramic medallions by Jules Paul Loebnitz alternate with small square windows; six, modelled by Émile Hugoulin, show Toulon artists, and six by Victorien Bastet show writers.