Musée des Beaux-Arts

Housed in the former Presidial building, open to the plane tree lined boulevards of the lower town, the Musée des Beaux-Arts offers a refuge of sensitive charm, a counterpoint to the grandiose silhouette of the medieval city.

A fine example of educational and scientific generosity, it was in 1845 that the Société des Arts et Sciences offered the city of Carcassonne a set of 102 paintings for its museum.

At the origin of this society, a Commission des Arts et Sciences had been founded in 1836 with the aim of "...researching, carefully conserving and classifying, in a public depository, everything that belongs to the antiquities and history of the country...".

Subsequently, in addition to deposits from the Louvre Museum and the State, donations from generous Carcassonnais continued to enrich the collections, in particular through gifts and bequests:

Courtejaire (1876, 1880 and 1884), Coste-Reboulh (1892), Chénier and Raynaud (1893), and finally in the 20th century Delteil (1984), Pla (1990) and Cahuzac (1995).

Since 1985, thanks to the city's interest in its museum and the support of the Regional Museum Acquisition Fund, new works have been added to this fine collection.