Musée de Picardie, Amiens

The Musée de Picardie is the main art and archaeology museum of Amiens in northern France, on Rue de la République between the station and the cathedral. It was the first building in France constructed specifically as a fine arts museum and suits visitors who want archaeology, medieval art and painting in one visit, together with Amiens Cathedral 700 m away.

From an 1802 deposit to the Antiquaires' building

Its collections began with a deposit of 85 paintings and engravings in 1802. The Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, recognised as a public body in 1851, pushed for a building to house them and handed the museum to the city in 1869. The building went up between 1855 and 1867: Henri Parent drew the plans and Arthur-Stanislas Diet, who succeeded him, designed the decoration. It was classified as a historic monument in its entirety in 2012, and after works that began in 2016 it reopened on 1 March 2020.

Egyptian mummy, Gallo-Roman finds and cathedral art

The archaeology rooms run from prehistory to the Gallo-Roman period, with Egyptian objects, including a mummy, and Greek pieces alongside regional finds. The medieval galleries show works linked to Amiens Cathedral, including paintings of the Confrérie du Puy Notre-Dame, a confraternity that offered one to the cathedral each year until 1666.

Paintings and the Puvis de Chavannes murals

The paintings run from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and include a Portrait of a Man by El Greco from around 1600, a landscape by Courbet and works by Picasso. The building itself is part of the visit: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes painted large murals for the staircase and first-floor galleries, among them Concordia and Bellum (Peace and War) of 1861 and Work and Rest of 1863. A wall drawing by Sol LeWitt fills the rotunda. The Maignan pavilion, added in 1929, holds the bequest of the painter Albert Maignan.