Musée de la Folie Marco, Decorative arts museum in Barr, France

Musée de la Folie Marco is a patrician house completed in 1763 at 30 rue du Docteur-Sultzer, north of Barr's old walls. Its yellow ochre facade has pale shutters, rusticated stone quoins and a wide arched gateway with blue doors; a Louis XIV oak staircase with carved balusters serves three floors, each with a large reception room.

Louis-Félix Marco, a lawyer at the Sovereign Council of Alsace, was appointed bailiff of Barr in 1750 and had this residence built by 1763. After his death, financial difficulties forced his son to sell it. In 1922 the childless brothers Henri and Gustave Schwartz bought it, and they bequeathed it to the town on condition that it become a museum, which opened in 1964.

The collection shows how Alsatian families furnished their homes across different time periods, from Renaissance through the 1800s. Walking through the rooms, you observe how local craftspeople adapted and refined their designs over generations.

The museum entrance is the single door opening onto the courtyard; the collections occupy three levels reached by a Louis XIV oak staircase with carved balusters. The 2,400 m² garden, renovated in 2001, holds trees from the first half of the 19th century, among them a purple beech, black pines and a large yew. A balcony with atlantes from Andlau Abbey is set into the eastern boundary wall.

The vineyard facing the museum dates from the Middle Ages and has belonged to the estate since the Revolution, when Jean-Christophe Kienlin bought it as national property. A 19th-century column at the entrance to the clos carries a plaque, set in after 1922, listing the successive owners back to the Grand Chapter of Strasbourg.