Lyon Museum of Fine Arts

Brief information

The Lyon Museum of Fine Arts occupies a former Benedictine monastery, and this changes the way you look at its galleries: here art is housed not in a purpose-built museum building, but in a structure that changed its function several times. Before the French Revolution it served as a monastery, then became the Palace of Commerce and Arts, where works confiscated from the church were displayed.

The most important trace of this history is not a date, but the building’s layout. In the 17th century, after major works, the monastery acquired Baroque features, and in 1860 it was converted into a museum; the layout created then has survived to the present day. As a result, collections from Ancient Egypt to the 20th century are perceived alongside the former monastic spaces, not separately from them.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing several physical parts of the museum as traces of its different functions. The building’s Baroque features recall the restoration of the monastery under Louis XIV: its decorative appearance emerged before its museum history. The preserved layout after the 1860 conversion shows the next turn: the former religious building was adapted as a permanent museum.

This is especially clear in the placement of the sculpture. Ancient sculpture is located on the ground floor, later works are placed in the former chapel, and 19th-century bronze sculptures are set out in the museum garden. These three zones help you read the museum not only by the periods of the collection, but also by its spaces: the floor, the chapel, and the garden function as different ways of displaying objects inside a building with a monastic past.