Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon occupies the Palais Saint-Pierre, a seventeenth-century Benedictine convent on the north side of the Place des Terreaux. The building was begun in the 1600s for the nuns of the abbey of Saint-Pierre, and after the Revolution it was turned into a museum, which opened to the public in 1803. It is often described as the largest fine-arts museum in France after the Louvre, and its collections run from ancient Egypt to the mid-twentieth century.

The building is as interesting as the collection. The abbey buildings surround a quiet cloister garden, with trimmed hedges, statues and shaded benches, hidden from the busy square outside. After the noise of Terreaux, with its large fountain by Bartholdi and the Hôtel de Ville opposite, the garden is a good place to rest between rooms. The rooms themselves keep their vaults, painted ceilings and carved woodwork in places, and the sculpture is shown in what was once the abbey's refectory.

The painting collection is the main draw. It includes Old Masters such as Veronese, Rubens and Rembrandt, a strong group of French works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a good set of nineteenth-century paintings, with Delacroix among the French names. Impressionist and modern artists including Monet, Gauguin, Picasso and Matisse are represented, and there are works by the Lyon-born painters of the nineteenth century. The Egyptian rooms and the antiquities department cover ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and the museum also holds medieval objects, decorative arts and coins.

A full visit takes two to three hours, and the museum is large enough that it is wise to pick a few departments rather than try to see all of it. Parts of the museum can close for rehearsals and new displays, as with any large museum, so look at the website before you plan around a particular gallery. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions and contemporary art events in connection with the city's Biennale of Contemporary Art.

The museum sits on the Presqu'île, in a part of the city that is easy to explore on foot. From the entrance you can reach the Croix-Rousse slopes in a few minutes, the opera house is next door, and Place Bellecour and the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste are a short walk or metro ride away. It suits art lovers, those who like quiet courtyards and anyone who wants a rainy-day plan in Lyon.