Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret
A municipal art museum housed in a Belle Époque Italianate villa, with works by Jules Chéret, Raoul Dufy and Kees van Dongen, and rarely crowded.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts sits on the Baumettes hillside west of the city center. The building is an Italian Renaissance–style villa built in 1878 for Princess Kotchoubey, a Ukrainian noblewoman, and its marble staircase and garden are worth seeing in their own right. The collection focuses on paintings and sculpture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jules Chéret, the “father of the poster,” settled in Nice in his later years, and the museum holds the largest concentration of his oil paintings and pastels. There are also works by Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen, Carpeaux and Rodin. The museum sees far fewer visitors than the Matisse and Chagall museums. It belongs to Nice’s municipal museum system, so the city museums pass can be used, and it is closed on Mondays. From the western end of the Promenade des Anglais, it is about a 10-minute uphill walk.
Opening hours
Closed Mon; 10:00 am–6:00 pm (opens at 11:00 am in winter)
Nearby sights
- Promenade des Anglais
- St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral
- Place Masséna
- Marc Chagall National Museum
- Vieux Nice / Cours Saleya
- Nice Cathedral (Sainte-Réparate)
- MAMAC Nice
- Castle Hill