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.

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.

This was a very nice museum. I really enjoyed the exhibit here. Before coming, i read that the…read moremuseum had been closed and renovated. If that's true, they did a wonderful job. The rooms are layers out in a timeline. The very first thing you see is a video that goes over the battle at Dunkirk. You then move on to learn about the civilians, life during the war, and Dunkirk's place in all of that. There are a lot of artifacts and memorabilia. There is a very well done model of some of the shops involved in the rescue. And there is a lot to read! You can easily spend a good hour learning about this important piece of history. I highly recommend a visit.

What do you do when you've already visited Brussels & Bruges? We decided to take an In Flanders…read moreFields tour that includes admission to this museum. It was a great tour! It's located in the reconstructed Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle) at Grote Markt in Ypres. Did you know that it had been totally destroyed during WWI? You would never know this by looking at it. The museum itself is very well done. It focuses on the battles of the Ypres Salient. It's the Western Front in WWI that covered about 9.2 square miles and formed a semicircle around Ypres. The objective of the museum is to show more of the human side of the trench warfare battlefield through personal experiences and artifacts. There's a great amount of information about the artillery projectiles that were responsible for two-thirds of all deaths on the battlefield. There's also a display of medical items used to dress these wounds during the battle and at Advanced Dressing Stations such as the one in Essex Farm. The chemical warfare exhibit is the most haunting of them all, but then you'll see art in the midst of all of it. The art pieces are scattered throughout the displays as a segue or transition that humanizes the subject matter. My only regret is not purchasing the audio guide. They give you a microchipped poppy bracelet that allows you to enter. It can be personalized, but no one really gives you any instructions on how to program it. Who has the time for that anyway? It can be used with the interactive displays to scan for personal stories of people who lived through the war. You can keep the bracelet as a souvenir. We just dropped it back into the dedicated container on the way out. There's an option to climb up to the bell tower if you have the time. We also saw a nice café in the museum with a gift shop. We had a very nice visit at the museum and Ypres. It's a beautiful city!

This is a great museum in the heart of Ypres. There is a parking lot nearby and some street parking…read moreavailable. Entrance was 10 euros for adults. Kids under 6 are free. You get a poppy bracelet to let you in and out of exhibit and to follow along with one person's experience. Audio guides are available for a small fee. It's a great museum with lots of great artifacts, and amazing dramatized first hand accounts. The museum offers everything in English, French, Dutch, and German so it's easy for many people to read and understand. We spent about 2 hours there. I'm a history nerd and read a majority of the panels. Our little one did well. The museum is stroller accessible and when he was done my husband was able t take him to the cafe downstairs for a snack while I continued in the museum. Highly recommend.

My mother and I visited this museum while we were in Brussels a few months ago and it was another…read moregreat museum in Brussels. They have a TON of paintings and sculptures. They have some great stuff here and I really liked the space in between each piece of art, as odd as that sounds, it let you spread out a bit when looking at a painting. There are many, huge rooms on two floors and there was something around every corner. This place was really cool and I would definitely visit here again.

This is one of Belgium's most famous fine arts museum. The buying tickets process is a bit…read morecomplicated as there are options to buy one exhibit or multiple exhibits. Either way, the ticket prices aren't hugely expensive and each exhibit is quite good so even if you buy the wrong exhibit, you'll have a good time. The museum itself is huge and I really appreciate them having electronic kiosks here and there to tell the stories of the paintings. There was one kiosk explaining how a painting of a family portrait got chopped off into three bits and the process of then identifying these pieces as a singular unit. I thought the story was quite incredibly as you not only learn about the art but also the way the museum conducts its business. While I was walking, I noticed that there was an English led tour going on and decided to join in. Not sure if this is for additional moneys, but honestly I would highly HIGHLY recommend. This is the only reason why the museum would get a 5-stars. The explainer was absolutely amazing, I definitely think that this was the best art museum tour I have ever been on. The guide didn't talk about many paintings, maybe 10-15 during the 1 hour tour, but every single painting she did talk about had such an interesting backstory and you're not learning just about the history but also about how the museum curates its work. You will definitely be able to get a deeper sense of appreciation for this place. Overall, highly recommend visiting, especially if you're deciding on going on a tour. The surrounding areas are also very nice too and would highly recommend checking out the surrounding architectures after the gallery visit.

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.

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.