Musée Picasso

The Musée Picasso in Antibes occupies the Château Grimaldi, a building on the ramparts overlooking the Mediterranean that has been a fortified site since antiquity. The Greeks of Marseille founded a trading post here called Antipolis, and the Romans later built on the site, followed by a medieval bishop's palace and then the residence of the Grimaldi family, from the fourteenth century. The town of Antibes bought the castle in 1925 and turned it into a museum, and the terrace on the sea side, with its views of the bay and the Alps and its collection of sculptures, is one of the most attractive museum terraces on the coast.

In the autumn of 1946, Picasso was invited to work in the castle, where the curator Romuald Dor de la Souchère gave him a large room as a studio. He was at the height of his postwar energy and painted at speed, in a mood of joy after the end of the war, covering the walls with scenes of fauns, centaurs, sea creatures and nymphs. The best known is La Joie de vivre, a large panel in which a dancing nymph is surrounded by satyrs and a centaur, a painting full of the light and mythology of the Mediterranean. Before he left, he gave the city the works he had made there, around two dozen paintings and a large group of drawings, with a promise that they would stay in the castle. In 1947 and 1948, he returned to work with the Madoura pottery in nearby Vallauris and added decorated ceramics, a group of about seventy-eight pieces that are also displayed. The museum opened as the Musée Picasso in the 1960s, making it the first museum in the world devoted to the artist, and a renovation between 2006 and 2008 refreshed the galleries.

The museum also shows other twentieth-century artists, many of whom worked on the Riviera, among them Nicolas de Staël, Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, so it gives a wider picture of art in the south of France. The sculptures on the terrace, including pieces by Miró, add to the open-air atmosphere.

It should not be confused with the Musée national Pablo Picasso in Vallauris, which is a separate museum in a chapel in that town, with the large mural La Guerre et la Paix. The Antibes museum is open every day except Monday, but check the hours, as tickets and times vary, and plan about an hour and a half.

It suits art lovers and those who enjoy the Riviera of the twentieth century. The old town of Antibes, the Marché Provençal, the Port Vauban and the Fort Carré are within walking distance, and the beaches of the Cap d'Antibes are not far.