Our Blog - July 2023 Musée des Augustins visit

The Musée des Augustins was founded in 1793, making it one of the oldest museums in France along with the Louvre. It is housed in a former convent from the 14th and 15th centuries and has paintings and sculptures. It is currently closed for renovations that will take until 2025, including improvements for accessibility (elevators and ramps, for example). They are also adding a new entry/reception area for the museum.

However, the museum is partially open (and FREE!) during the summer with a subset of works being shown in the church and the cloister being open with a little snack bar. We took advantage of this to just pop our heads in for a few minutes.

Here you can see what was the church of the convent, with the Gothic arches and ribbed vaults.

There is one chapel that still retains the 18th century decoration although it is pretty damaged.

What is nice about the collection that is being shown here is that many of the pieces would have been very difficult to see this close-up in their normal position. For example, here we have 2 of the 4 statues of saints that were placed on the steps leading to the baldachin of a large baroque altarpiece in the former Carmelite Chapel. Usually, you can't get this close to a main altar.

Another example of being able to see up-close sculptures is a set of 15 gargoyles that date from the 14th century. Gargoyles are normally put at the edge of the roof of churches to be, basically, rain gutters. In many cases, the rain water would flow out of the mouths of these gargoyles, which normally are animals.

Above where the altar would have been is a painting of the Last Judgement, painted at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century. At the bottom, you can see Saint Michael wearing armor and holding a spear with a cross in one hand and a set of scales in the other (you can really only make out the top of the scales due to damage).

Lastly, the rose window which sits just above the organ, and the corner of two of the galleries of the cloister.