Museums

The city Vasio Julia Vocontiorum shows many Roman and medieval buildings, ruins and artefacts. It is the largest archaeological site of France and shows 2000 years of culture, including the Gallo-Roman museum Théo Desplans,  a Roman theatre, Roman bridge, streets and houses, medieval cloister, cathedral and other Romanesque buildings.  

The museum (Musée de Valence) is housed in the ancient (medieval) palace of the bishop. The collection shows the Roman past of the city (Valentia), the medieval period and many paintings, sculptures and fine art from the fifteenth-nineteenth centuries.

The castle organizes temporary exhibitions of paintings and sculpture, while the parc is the home to some fifty modern sculptures in bronze, marble or mosaic by Braque, Dali, Léger, Corneille and many others. In one of the buildings is a museum devoted to the writer Jules Michelet (1798-1874).

The Orangery of the castle (Chateau de Vendreuve) shows a miniature furniture collection from the 16th century to 1930 that includes more than seven hundred miniature furniture and thousands of small objects. The dimensions of this miniature furniture are fascinating. The diversity of shapes, the multiplicity of the material (wood, wax, earthenware, paper, leather, bronze, … Read more » “Vendreuve Castle”

The museum (musée de Ventabren) presents the archaeological finds of the Celtic-Roman and medieval past.  

The Château de Versailles, which has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List for 30 years, is one of the most beautiful achievements of 18th-century French art. The site began as Louis XIII’s hunting lodge before his son Louis XIV transformed and expanded it, moving the court and government of France to Versailles in 1682. The … Read more » “Chateau de Versailles”

The museum (musée départemental Georges de la Tour) has a collection of works by Georges de la Tour and other paintings from the seventeenth nineteenth centuries.