Terrific museum We spent the best part of a rainy Saturday…read moreafternoon in this surprisingly good art museum. There was an extensive and varied collection of art and it was terrific value at €7. It would have been great if there had been some information in English.

I'm going to be very upfront in the beginning of this review, when I arrived at Palais des Beaux…read moreArts I was pretty burnt out with museums at this point, it was extremely cold, raining, and we were waiting in a line outside for like twenty minutes so the start to this experience was pretty miserable. Once we got into the building and through the security checkpoint, you could tell right away that this place was pretty beautiful. The building itself is 3 stories and each floor has something a little bit different to offer you. We headed down first and spent some time looking at the statues which were absolutely incredible, followed by the second floor which was a mixture of different pieces of art and a dome style room you could sit on beanbags and watch something. The main event of the show was upstairs where I couldn't even estimate the insane amount of paintings that fill the walls of the different colored rooms. The rooms themselves are all tall and covered from floor to ceiling with such incredible pieces, and everything you think you are done suddenly the red painted rooms turn into white rooms or green rooms and it just keeps going, it was truly remarkable. Overall, the Palais des Beaux Arts was a fantastic place to spend an hour or so learning about French art. Did I leave some stuff out? Yeah, because this was like my 23rd museum and at some point they start blending together. I loved how diverse the art here was and really did enjoy walking around, I highly recommend checking this place out if you are in Lille.

Ahh, another great art gallery, and it is a little bigger than the one that I visited in Arras. The…read moregallery is actually a mix between an archeological museum and a art gallery, and is divided into various rooms. One of the rooms is decated to paintings, another to sculptures, and another room dedicated to religious art, and in the basement you have the archeological museum which explores all of the stuff dug up in the area as well as the evolution of Amiens from Roman times. There is also an upstairs area, but that was still being retrofitted so there wasn't a huge amount of stuff here. Still, it was definitely a pretty awesome museum, and while the collection wasn't as large compared to some museums, there is still enough here to keep you engaged.

From the owner: Une belle collection régionale Construit de 1855 a 1867 par ordre de Napoléon III, le musée de…read morePicardie figure parmi les dix plus grands musées Français de province pour la richesse de ses collections en archéologie, peinture, et sculpture. La plupart des collections proviennent de fouilles régionales. Parmi les oeuvres, on trouve des pièces datant du Moyen-Age et provenant de la cathédrale d'Amiens. L'art contemporain est également représenté avec une des oeuvres de Sol Le Witt.

Museums that gives you some insights into what the soldiers faced and experience in the trenches by…read moreputting you down in an underground passageway. Film at the beginning isn't so much an intro to the museum as a promotional film for other nearby WWI sites.

This museum has been carved out of some tunnels that snaked under the town of Albert. The museum…read morebegins next to the church and comes out at the gardens. I discovered it when I received some discount tickets from the Carrarie Wellington and was a little disappointed that we were going to miss out on it. It turned out that I was going to be quite lucky because the tour we went on took us down there. The museum, like a lot of similar museums in the region, consists of lots of stuff that had been picked up and dug up over the years and has been sorted into a a semblance of order. The other interesting thing was that the church it is under was hit by a shell in the early days of the war, by the steeple didn't collapse - it just hung there. There was then a theory that when the steeple collapsed thenn the war would come to an end. Also, the troups would pass under it on the way to the front, and did so as a form of blessing.

Well done. Starts with a video. Then you can walk around the museum upstairs. It's free to Vets…read more The part we really wanted to see was the map room. It is being well preserved. The chairs are marked with the names that sat there. Can you imagine what it was like in this room? Can you imagine the smell?

Yes Reims has a lot for you to see but this is the must go to place…read more The Reddition is where the first German surrender signing took place before the second signing in Berlin (because Stalin felt a bit left out). You start with a 20 minute film which is excellent and very informative, then you go upstairs to see the war room and the actual signing room itself...there are also plenty of exhibits The film also talks about why this building - a school - was used, that it was the HQ of SHEAF first. I thought I knew my history but this is a great addition The only downside, lots of school kids outside smoking and not just tobacco or vaping...!

This place is magnificent! Came here for the Week-End Familial for L'exposition of Degas Sculpteur…read more Throughout my years of Art History, none of my professors elaborated on the controversy revolving Edgar Degas' work. I have seen Degas work many times and his most notable sculpteur La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans lives at at Musée D'Orsay, which I have seen there and now here. I didn't know ballerinas back then were considered lower class, since the girl's family would push them to do ballet in hopes to catch an eye of the wealthy. It's almost a form of pedophile...actually it is! Degas also made this ballerina have a face of criminals. So a lot of people weren't fans of him. Moving on out of Degas, this Musée isn't magnificent because of Degas pieces...it's breathtaking because the Philanthropist kept the look and feel of La Piscine. The swimming pool was constructed between 1927 and 1932 by the Lille architect Albert Baert. It closed as a swimming pool in 1985, and was remodelled as a museum by the architect Jean-Paul Philippon, opening in 2000. A modern entrance building, special exhibition space and garden were constructed within the roof-less shell of an adjoining textile factory. The museum's permanent collection has its origins in 1835, when a collection of fabric samples from the many local textile factories was started. By 1898 the collection was housed in the National High School of Arts and Textile Industry (ENSAIT), and was seen as a way of cultivating the tastes of the town's workers, foremen and manufacturers. To this end the collection combined elements of literature, fine-arts, science and industrial products. The ENSAIT museum closed with the onset of World War II, and never reopened. From 1899 the collections were displayed in Roubaix's town hall, in preparation for the opening of La Piscine in 2000. L thought I would enjoy this Musée more, since I am not really into Modern Art and since I have a background in Textile...this would be the better choice. They have art hanging on the ceilings and original shower stalls within, beautiful garden and also they have Meert here.

Very nice atmosphere for this special museum. It has been built into the old swimming pool of…read moreRoubaix and kept plenty of accessories from this old time. You can admire sculptures and paintings there gathered by genre. You have a restaurant inside, an auditorium and a fabric room you can rent for your meetings.

The Arras Art Museum is actually located in a former monestary, and while it isn't as large as some…read moreof the places that I have visited, it still takes up a little over three floors of one of the wings (though parts of the gallery extend into other wings). Since Arras isn't that huge, the gallery contains a mixture of art from across the ages, though a lot of it does tend to be medieval and early modern with a smattering of paintings and objets d'art. Mind you, I'm not actually that particularly interested in decorative art, however there were quite a number of pretty awesome paintings, including some incredibly large ones at that. The tickets aren't all that pricey either, so if for some reason you find yourself in Arras then it is certainly worth checking out.

From the owner: Une collection riche et diversifiée Installé dans une partie de l'Abbaye Saint-Vaast, le musée…read moremunicipal est riche d'une collection assez bien étoffée puisque au rez-de-chaussée on peut découvrir des oeuvres d'arts funéraire et sacrées dont quelques-unes ayant trait à l'histoire du diocèse d'Arras. Il renferme ainsi le Trésor de la Cathédrale de l'ancien musée diocésien. Au premier étage, sont exposées les toiles des écoles françaises et flamandes des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles tandis que le second est occupé par des toiles du XIXe dont certaines de l'école d'Arras. Un échantillon assez large de l'histoire de l'art tout à l'honneur de la ville d'Arras qui consacre à la culture une attention certaine.

If you are after a very alternative and different museum, this may be one option - simply put, this…read moresued to be a hospital but the previous building and structure has been transformed to now house an art gallery or museum. The different angle alone may be worth the visit and a quick snap of the camera. In terms of what is on display however, this was less impressive (when compared against other museums in and around Lille). Relatively easy to locate on the map and not in the most inconvenient of places, even if this do not fancy this after a quick peek, there is very little to lose.

From the owner: Richesse de l'art flamand Cet hôpital, fondé en 1237 par la comtesse Jeanne de Flandres, est…read moretransformé après la Révolution en hospice, puis en orphelinat après 1914-18. Si l'édifice original est détruit lors d'un incendie au XVème siècle, les bâtiments actuels (XVème et XVIIème siècle) sont de parfaits exemples de l'architecture lilloise.