Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi

The Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, in south-west France, holds the largest public collection of work by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It occupies the Palais de la Berbie, the 13th-century fortified palace of the bishops of Albi, on Place Sainte-Cécile beside the cathedral. It suits art lovers and anyone on a day trip from Toulouse, about an hour away by train.

Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi in 1864 into an aristocratic family. He made his name in Paris, painting and drawing the cabarets, dance halls and performers of Montmartre and designing posters that changed the look of advertising. He died in 1901, aged 36. The works left in his studio passed to his parents, the Count and Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec, who, advised by a cousin, gave more than a thousand of them to his home town. That gift explains why his largest collection is here and not in Paris.

The museum opened in 1922 in the Palais de la Berbie, which had held Albi's town museum since 1905. The palace is a listed historic monument. With the brick Sainte-Cécile Cathedral next door, it forms part of the Episcopal City of Albi, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010.

From horse studies to the Moulin Rouge

The rooms follow his career in order, with paintings, drawings, lithographs and posters. Early portraits and studies of horses from his youth come first. The Montmartre years follow, with paintings of the Moulin Rouge and its performers, Salon in the Rue des Moulins (1894) and An Examination at the Faculty of Medicine (1901), one of his last paintings. The poster rooms show the lithographs he made for Paris cabarets and singers. Temporary exhibitions look at Lautrec and the artists around him.

The palace is part of the visit, with its massive brick walls, vaulted rooms and medieval keep. The formal Berbie garden sits on the terraces above the river Tarn and looks out to the old bridge. The terrace and garden are free to enter, open 8:30 to 20:00 from June to September and 8:30 to 18:00 the rest of the year.