Musée Magnin

The Musée Magnin is a small house museum devoted to the private collection of a brother and sister, Maurice and Jeanne Magnin, who spent their lives gathering paintings, drawings, furniture and objects. It is located in the French city of Dijon, in Burgundy, in the Hôtel Lantin, a seventeenth-century town house in the old quarter. The Magnins lived in the house and arranged their treasures there, and when they died they left the building and its contents to the state, on condition that the house remain much as they had arranged it. The museum opened in the late 1930s.

The collection is chiefly made up of paintings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, with a strong group of works from the French school and also Italian and Flemish pictures. Alongside them are drawings, engravings, furniture, tapestries and decorative arts, and the rooms are hung in the manner of a private home rather than a gallery, with pictures grouped on walls, as in the days when the collection was formed. This arrangement gives the visit a different character from a conventional museum: you walk through the rooms of a bourgeois family house of the early twentieth century, and the sense of a personal taste is strong.

The building itself deserves attention. The Hôtel Lantin, with its courtyard and staircase, is a good example of a Burgundian town mansion, and the interiors keep their panelling and period fittings. The museum is typically quiet, which makes it a good choice for visitors who want to look slowly and without crowds. The museum also stages exhibitions of contemporary art from time to time, which brings a modern note to the old rooms, and guided tours are offered on selected dates. Free guidebooks help visitors understand the collection.

Opening hours change, and the museum is usually closed on Mondays and on public holidays, so check the current schedule before you plan the visit. Allow about one to two hours.

The museum suits art lovers who like small collections, those interested in the history of collecting and visitors who want a break from larger museums. Because it is in Dijon, it can be combined with the Palais des Ducs de Bourgogne, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and the old streets of the city.