A few days of predicted on and off rains prompted us to buy Nice Museum Passes for €15 each, giving us admission to ten different area museums over the next four consecutive days. Ordinarily we prefer to spread out museum visits over several weeks, but we weren’t going to pass up this deal. We went to six of the ten museums in three days. Purchased separately, tickets to those six museums would have cost a total of €45 each. A Nice Museum Pass may be purchased at any of the participating museums.
Keep in mind that most museums in Nice close on either Monday or Tuesday. Decide which museums you want to visit on which days first. We bought our Nice Museum Passes on a Wednesday, intending to use them over three days.
First, we visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts (the website appears to be only in French, like the museum signs). At the time of our visit paintings from two prominent families, the Trachels and Rothchilds, were featured, along with a selection from Jules Chéret. We enjoyed most of the works, particularly the paintings of Hercule Trachel.
The only real negative is that the size of the museum is fairly small. It is a much smaller museum than the size of the building suggests. Our visit lasted no more than 30 minutes, maybe a bit less. As much as we liked the works on display, I’m not sure it is worth the €10 regular admission.
From the fine arts museum we walked to Musée Masséna (another website only in French, again like the signs in the museum). Rooms on the first floor illustrate a restored villa, the second floor showcases artwork, and the third floor hosts temporary exhibitions. Pop’Expo, featuring the Nice Carnival in popular culture, was on display during our visit.
We probably spent about 30 minutes in the museum, with the vast majority of that time on the second floor. In addition to paintings, there are really interesting collections of old maps and posters. If you only have time to go to one museum in Nice, this is probably the one. A regular admission ticket costs €10.
On our second day we ventured into old town Nice to visit the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre and the Musée du Palais Lascaris.
The photography museum was probably my favorite of all. On display was an exhibit titled “The Manhattan Darkroom”, photographs taken in New York by Henri Dauman from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Consisting of predominately large black and white prints, the exhibit featured photographs of street life in New York, John F. Kennedy, Elvis, and various other famous actors, actresses, musicians, and artists.
Even though we weren’t there long, I’d pay the regular price of €5 to visit the photography museum.
Next we made the short walk to Palais Lascaris, a baroque palace originally built in the mid-1600s for a noble family. Now it is home to a small museum focusing on art and music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Let’s just say there are a lot of musical instruments in this museum, rooms of them, as well as some paintings by the Trachel family, several tapestries and pieces of furniture, a chapel, and frescoed ceilings.
Someone with an appreciation for old musical instruments (pianos, harps) would appreciate this museum more than most. For the €5 regular admission price it is okay, but nothing spectacular. We were in and out pretty quickly.
To start our third and final day using the Nice Museum Pass, we jumped onto bus 5 and headed to Musée Matisse. Upon arrival we were shown a notice that the main collection is on loan to a museum in Tokyo, Japan. I gather this notice is being shown to everyone before a ticket is purchased. There was a large stack of notices in probably a dozen or more different languages on the counter. Better to warn in advance than have an angry visitor.
At the time of our visit the exhibition on display consisted of sketches and sculptures by Henri Matisse along with large paintings by Djamel Tatah, inspired by Matisse. The museum’s signs are in French and English, which is a nice touch. I think we spent maybe 30 minutes at Musée Matisse, mostly looking at the Matisse drawings while passing by the Tatah paintings (not for us).
Musée Matisse’s regular admission price is €10; however, it is a two for one ticket with Musée d’Archéologie. These two museums are located on the hill of Cimiez, the former Roman city of Cemenelum. The archaeology museum houses a small collection of Roman artifacts and ruins.
Since the archaeology museum was free with our pass and literally in front of us, we stopped in for a look. There are two floors of artifacts and a short outdoor walk around the ruins. A small amphitheater was closed for renovations during our visit.
The archaeology museum is nicely done, but we did not spend much time there, just a quick walk through. Honestly we saw so many Roman ruins in Italy last year that we’ve sworn off archaeology museums for the foreseeable future.
If you only want to visit the archaeology museum, a ticket costs €5. But if you are there, you might as well go to both museums for €10.
Having taken the time to trek up Cimiez hill, you should definitely walk through the Jardin des Arènes de Cimiez over to the Monastère de Cimiez, a Franciscan monastery encompassing a 15th century church, courtyard, museum, cemetery, and gardens with views looking over Nice to the east and southeast.
The monastery’s museum is open weekdays from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM. We arrived later in the day and missed the museum. But the church and gardens are beautiful and should definitely be visited if you are in the area.
We intentionally skipped three of the ten museums included in the Nice Museum Pass for lack of interest: Musée d’Art Niaf (naive and folk art); Musée Prehistoire de Terra Amata (paleontology); and Musée de Histoire Naturalle (natural history).
One museum was closed for renovations, the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC, modern and contemporary art). Not caring for modern or contemporary art, I dodged a bullet. Without a doubt Stephanie would have dragged me to MAMAC if it were open.
The following week we visited Musée Marc Chagall. As a national museum of France, entry to the museum is free on the first Sunday of each month; otherwise, €8. (It is not part of the Nice Museum Pass.)
We stepped up to the ticket window shortly after the 10:00 AM opening. After picking up our free tickets, we walked over to the museum’s entry. We waited for a few minutes to get through security, but gained entry pretty quickly.
The Chagall Museum consists of about a half dozen large rooms on one floor. At mid-morning on a free Sunday there were quite a few visitors present, but it was not crowded in the slightest. As we walked through the museum we could not help but notice that it was getting busier.
Forty minutes later the entry room was packed and the line at security was over 25 deep. We got out just before it got crowded. This is just another reminder that on free days, go first or last in the day, either before or after the crowds.
I doubt we would have gone to Musée Marc Chagall had it not been free. I told Stephanie as we were leaving that I have standard blog language to describe most of the museums we visit: nice museum; quality artwork; but, not our style. And so it was with Musée Marc Chagall.
Garrett and Stephanie
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I’ve so enjoyed seeing your travels what an amazing journey you’ve shared. ❤️