Musée Grobet-Labadié

The Musée Grobet-Labadié is a house museum in Marseille, on the Boulevard Longchamp, in a mansion that was built in the 1870s for a wealthy merchant family and that has been kept much as it was when they lived there. It stands on the broad avenue that leads up to the Palais Longchamp, the monumental fountain and museum complex, in a district of fine nineteenth-century buildings that is a long way in style from the port and the old town, and its calm rooms are a refuge from the bustle of the city.

The museum is named after two linked families of Marseille, the Labadié and the Grobet, who were wealthy merchants and collectors, and they filled the rooms with a wide-ranging assembly of works of art and furniture that reflected their taste and wealth. Marie Grobet bequeathed the house and its contents to the city in 1919, and the museum opened soon after. For this reason the museum is arranged as a home, not as a gallery, and visitors walk through the entrance hall, the salons and the rooms, where the objects are displayed in their domestic context. It is sometimes compared with the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris and the Wallace Collection in London, which are also the collections of wealthy private owners preserved in their original settings.

The collection is varied. It includes period furniture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with paintings, sculpture, tapestries, ceramics, stained glass and musical instruments, and it ranges from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, with a particular strength in the eighteenth. The medieval sculptures and the tapestries, among them Flemish pieces of the sixteenth century, are among the highlights, and the instruments of the collection reflect the owners' interest in music. The eclectic mix was typical of the bourgeois taste of the late nineteenth century, when the rich liked to display a wide range of art and antiques, and the museum gives a good picture of the cultural tastes and the daily life of a prosperous Marseille family of that time.

The museum is open on most days, with different hours on certain days, and entry charges are low, with free entry for children, students, job seekers and visitors with disabilities. Check the schedule before you go. A visit takes about an hour. The atmosphere is quiet and unhurried.

The museum suits lovers of decorative arts and interior design, and it makes a good complement to a visit to the Palais Longchamp, the Musée Cantini and the Vieille Charité.