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.

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.

I was very impressed walking through this building. The display is in the information told me…read morethings that I never knew about something that I thought I knew quite a bit of bad. The presentation was well conceived and comfortable. There were plenty of places to stop and listen with the language interpretation headsets that were presented before going on the tour. It's self guided and at your own pace. It worked out wonderfully period it is attached to the Basilica which are able to wander around on the inside which is an amazing structure that was rebuilt after World War II you can imagine the massive size of this name out of work that went into restoring it to its former glory. Be sure to see this little storyboard showing the rebuild.

While I would say that it can be a little difficult to find, being located in a small alleyway…read morebeside the Rouen Cathedral, it is about Jeanne d'arc, and anything about Jeanne is pretty clearly advertised in and around Rouen (in fact they clearly mark all of the significant Jeanne related spots in the city). This isn't actually your ordinary museum, and it definitely isn't her house (you are going to have to go out into the French countryside to actually find her birthplace), but it is a museum that is dedicated to her (I believe that it is the former Archbishop's residence). The museum is more like a guided documentary that follows the second trial of Jeanne, the one that acquitted here (after she had been burnt at the stake mind you) and goes through all aspects of her life, her time in the military, the Battle of Orleans, and of course here capture, trial, and eventual execution. As it is set up as a video where you move from room to room for a different part, they only let people in every fifteen minutes, and the entire tour takes around an hour and a half (depending on how long you spend in the final rooms that look at her legacy). Certainly a different way to set up a museum, and definitely a place to visit if you happen to be in Rouen.

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.

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.

Okay, this is a medieval museum but it focuses on probably the only historical event that happened…read moreto put this sleepy village in the middle of the countryside onto the map - the battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War where the English, led by Henry V, completely annihilated the French army. Mind you, this museum seems to be geared toward the English because the only reason that the battle is remembered is because the English beat the French, and history buffs like me probably all descended upon this place to check it out, even though it is basically a bunch of paddocks with some wooden soldiers at the side of the road. Actually, the fact that there was a museum here actually surprised me because I only ever expected to see a sleepy little village with a pub.

From the owner: Aux origines de l'humanité Le concept du parc Samara est inédit : il propose de faire découvrir au…read moreplus grand nombre le patrimoine archéologique de la Somme - considéré comme l'un des plus riches de France - le plus concrètement possible : le parc Samara, situé à 15 km d'Amiens, est niché au coeur d'un site 100% naturel de 24 hectares. Véritable trait d'union entre passé et avenir, il permet au grand public de comprendre les modes de vie de l'homme préhistorique. Une approche originale où le visiteur est totalement immergé au coeur de 600 000 ans d'histoire, depuis le Paléolithique jusqu'à la période gallo-romaine.

St Riquier is now a small, quiet village 3 miles (5km) to the east of Abbeville (Somme). But once…read moreit was an important centre in Charlemagne's empire, and the abbey (founded in the 7th century) became the property of his son-in-law, Angilbert, the poet and 'Homer of the Palatine'. Nothing remains of the abbey from that period: instead, the chief interest is the amazing church, which dominates the centre of the village. Of cathedral-like proportions, it is a masterpiece of the 15th century French flamboyant gothic style. The West Front has a muscular square tower with rather heavy proportions - butresses slope from either side like the wings of some mediaeval space rocket, about to take off. But the strongly vertical decorative scheme is well done, and full of niches which hold delicate carvings of saints, angels and biblical scenes. But even this does not prepare you for the interior. The local stone here is a form of chalk, and it is a dazzling white, emphasising the soaring gothic lines. This underscores the nave's impressive scale: the arcades are surmounted by enormous plain-glass clerestory windows, thrusting upwards to a series of vaults soaring 24m (78ft) high. The piers are covered in interesting carvings. The furnishings are relatively modest in comparison: the chancel has some interesting 17th century iron grilles and monks' stalls. The side chapels contain some rather dull 19th century paintings and nicer 16th century painted statues. The church is the setting for an impressive music festival in July: it must be a marvellous spectacle.

Two fortunate things happened when I came here. Firstly the computers were down so we got in for…read morefree, and secondly they had an exhibition on a group of impressionists. In fact a lot of paintings that I didn't see in the Mussee d'Orsay weren't there because they happened to be here. While the exhibition (or exposition as they say it in French) was impressive, the rest of the museum was doubly so. In fact the museum is not only quite large, but also has a pretty decent collection of paintings, and other works of art, as well. In fact it can be easy to get lost. Unfortunately, not all of the halls were open, which was a bit of a shame, but we did get to see quite a lot.

I enjoyed visiting this museum, and it's impressive temporary impressionist art exhibit that was…read morepart of the Normany Impressionist Festival in August of 2013. (And as we walked through the exhibit, my husband whispered "Monet, Monet, Monet, Monet - Mo-ne!" to the tune of the song "Money".) There are 2 floors to the museum, and my husband & I explored the beautiful permanent art exhibits as well. It takes an hour or so to get through everything.

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.