Museum of Fine Arts in Carcassonne, Aude, France | Museum

Museum of Fine Arts - Housed in the former courthouse ("Présidial") overlooking the plane-lined boulevards of the lower town, the Art Gallery (musée des Beaux-Arts) has a discreet charm that counterbalances the grandiose effect of the medieval walled town.
The Art Gallery was a fine example of educational and scientific generosity. It was in 1845 that the Société des Arts et Sciences gave Carcassonne Town Council a set of 102 paintings for its museum. The Société had originally been founded as the "Commission des Arts et Sciences" in 1836 with the aim of "� researching, carefully conserving and classifying, in a public depositary, all that belongs to the days of Antiquity and to the history of the locality�". Later, in addition to deposits from the Louvre and central government, donations and bequests from generous local people continued to expand the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts.