Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours


The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours is located in the bishop's former palace, near the cathedral St. Gatien, where it has been since 1910. It displays rich and varied collections, including that of painting which is one of the first in France both in quality and the diversity of the works presented.

Description

In the courtyard, there is a magnificent cedar of Lebanon and a stuffed elephant in a building in front of the museum. This elephant was killed because of a bout of madness during a circus parade by the "Barnum & Bailey" circus in the streets of Tours on 10 June 1902.
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The museum has over 12,000 works of which 1,000 are on show to the public. On the ground floor, the museum has a room especially dedicated to Tours art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The museum was classified as a monument historique on 27 June 1983.

Collections

The museum has a large and fairly homogeneous collection of paintings, which includes several masterpieces such as two paintings by Andrea Mantegna, from the predella of the San Zeno Altarpiece: