Musée Fabre, Montpellier

The Musée Fabre is the fine arts museum of Montpellier in southern France, at 39 boulevard Bonne Nouvelle on the edge of the old town, about 300 metres from Place de la Comédie. Its collection runs from Renaissance painting to Pierre Soulages, with an especially strong 19th-century section, and it suits art lovers who want a full afternoon of European painting outside Paris.

The museum began in 1825, when the town council accepted a large gift from François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier-born painter who had built his collection during his years in Florence. It opened on 3 December 1828 in the refurbished Hôtel de Massilian. Other collectors followed. The most important was Alfred Bruyas, a Montpellier collector and patron of Gustave Courbet, who gave a large group of 19th-century paintings and completed it with a bequest of more than 200 works in 1877.

In 2005 Pierre Soulages, the painter of black "outrenoir" canvases, and his wife Colette made a major donation, and the museum gave him a dedicated room. A renovation from 2003 to January 2007, costing 61.2 million euros, added space and reorganised the route.

Courbet, Bazille and the Bruyas gift

The 19th-century rooms are the heart of the visit. The Bruyas gift brought Courbet's The Bathers and his Bonjour Monsieur Courbet, which shows the painter meeting Bruyas on a country road. Frédéric Bazille, born in Montpellier and killed in 1870, is well represented, as is Alexandre Cabanel. Earlier rooms hold Flemish and Dutch masters and works by Jacques-Louis David. The visit ends in the Soulages rooms, where light catches the ridges of his black paint.

More than 700 paintings, sculptures and drawings are on show across 9,200 square metres, and audio guides are available in French and English. The Hôtel Sabatier d'Espeyran, a mansion attached to the museum, shows furnished 19th-century interiors and decorative arts.

The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00 and closes on Monday, and some public holidays such as 25 December. Ticket desks stop selling 30 minutes before closing, so be inside by 17:30. The Hérault tourist board lists full-price admission from €9 to €12, depending on whether a temporary exhibition is included, with reduced or free rates for young visitors. The permanent collection is free on the first Sunday of each month, which is also the busiest day; arrive at the 11:00 opening if you go then.

Weekday afternoons are calm outside the summer exhibition season. Allow about two hours, more if a major temporary show is on. There are lifts and accessible routes, a bookshop and a cloakroom; cafés line the nearby squares.

Trams 1 and 2 stop at Comédie, about 300 metres away, and Montpellier Saint-Roch station is about 800 metres, roughly ten minutes on foot. The Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle runs beside the museum, and the Promenade du Peyrou, with its aqueduct and views, is about 1.2 kilometres west through the old town lanes.