Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (Rouen Museum of Fine Arts)

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen is the fine arts museum of Rouen in Normandy, on the Esplanade Marcel-Duchamp in the city centre, about 800 metres from Rouen Rive Droite station. Its permanent collection is free and holds one of the largest groups of Impressionist paintings in France outside Paris, including Monet's Rouen Cathedral. It is an easy day trip from Paris, about an hour and a half by train.

Works seized from churches and religious houses during the Revolution began to be gathered in Rouen from 1790. The museum was formally created by the Chaptal decree of 1 September 1801, which set up museums in a number of French cities. The present building, with its stone façade and top-lit galleries, was designed by Louis Sauvageot and built between 1877 and 1888 to show the collection.

In 1909 the Rouen industrialist François Depeaux gave the museum a remarkable group of Impressionist canvases, with works by Monet and Sisley among them. Renoir and Pissarro hang in the same rooms, and Monet's view of Rouen Cathedral, one of his series of the façade in changing light, is the painting many visitors come to see. In years when the Normandy Impressionist Festival runs, the museum stages related exhibitions.

The older collections are just as strong. Caravaggio's Flagellation and Velázquez's Democritus are the two best-known old masters. Théodore Géricault, born in Rouen, has his own place, and Delacroix hangs nearby. The Duchamp family, Marcel and his siblings, who grew up near Rouen, is also represented, which explains the name of the esplanade outside. Sculpture, decorative arts and drawings fill out the route, which spans European art from the 15th to the 21st centuries.

Admission to the permanent collections is free for everyone; some temporary exhibitions are charged. The museum opens 10:00 to 18:00 and is closed on Tuesday and on 1 January, 1 May, 1 and 11 November and 25 December. Last entry is about 30 minutes before closing. Weekday mornings are quietest. Allow about two hours.

Wheelchair users enter at 26 bis rue Jean-Lecanuet. The MBA-Café and the bookshop are inside. In autumn 2026 the paid exhibition is David Hockney Normandism.

Direct trains from Paris Saint-Lazare reach Rouen Rive Droite in about an hour and a half, and the museum is a 10-minute walk downhill. The métrobus runs from the station and from Palais de Justice, and buses 4, 8, 11 and 13 stop at Square Verdrel – Rue Jeanne-d'Arc. The Musée de la Céramique is about 200 metres away. The Gros-Horloge, the cathedral that Monet painted and Place du Vieux-Marché, are all within a kilometre, so the museum fits easily into a day in the old town.