5 Best Sights in Toulouse and the Languedoc, France

In a garden designed by the renowned André Le Nôtre, creator of the "green geometries" at Versailles, the landmark Palais de la Berbie (Berbie Palace), between the cathedral and the Pont Vieux (Old Bridge), is the setting for this exceptional museum. Built in 1265 as a residence for Albi's archbishops, the fortresslike structure was transformed in 1922 into a museum to honor Albi's most celebrated son, Belle Époque painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). Toulouse-Lautrec left Albi for Paris in 1882 and soon became famous for his colorful, tumultuous evocations of the lifestyle of bohemian glamour found in and around Montmartre. Son of a wealthy and aristocratic family (Lautrec is a village not far from Toulouse), the young Henri suffered from a genetic bone deficiency and broke both legs as a child, which stunted his growth. But it was the artist's fascination with the decadent side of life that led him to an early grave at the age of 37. The museum's collection of artworks—more than a thousand, representing the world's largest Toulouse-Lautrec corpus—has been deftly organized into theme rooms, including galleries devoted to some of his greatest portraits and scenes from Paris's maisons closées (brothels), with paintings stylishly hung amid the palace's brick ogival arches. There are other masterworks here, including paintings by Georges de la Tour and Francesco Guardi.

No Matissses hold pride of place at the town's Musée d'Art Moderne, but the collection of 180 works deftly sums up the influence the artist had on this cité des peintures (city of paintings). Works by Cocteau, Valtat, and others are impressively housed in a picturesque, ivy-shrouded villa on a beautiful hillside site.

The real draw in the Ville Basse (newer, lower portion of Carcassonne), this museum houses a nice collection of porcelain, 17th- and 18th-century Flemish paintings, and works by local artists—including some stirring battle scenes by Jacques Gamelin (1738–1803).

From crowd-packed Place de la Comédie, Boulevard Sarrail leads north past the shady Esplanade Charles de Gaulle to this rich, renowned art museum. The building—combining a 17th-century hôtel, a vast Victorian wing with superb natural light, and a remnant of a Baroque Jesuit college—is a mixed bag of architectural styles. The collection inside is surprisingly big, thanks to the museum's namesake, a Montpellier native. François-Xavier Fabre, a student of the great 18th-century French artist David, established roots in Italy and acquired a formidable collection of masterworks—which he then donated to his hometown, supervising the development of this fine museum. Among his gifts were the Mariage Mystique de Sainte Catherine, by Veronese, and Poussin's coquettish Venus et Adonis. Later contributions include a superb group of 17th-century Flemish works (Rubens, Steen), a collection of 19th-century French canvases (Géricault, Delacroix, Corot, Millet) that inspired Gauguin and Van Gogh, and a growing group of 20th-century acquisitions that buttress a legacy of paintings by early Impressionist Frédéric Bazille.

This museum, dedicated to medieval applied arts, is housed in the Hôtel Pierre Besson, a 17th-century mansion.