MuMa Museum of modern art André Malraux

Le Havre was flattened by bombing in the Second World War and rebuilt in raw concrete, so when its new art museum opened in 1961, all glass and steel and daylight off the sea, it felt like a statement about the future. André Malraux, then France's culture minister, came to inaugurate it, and the museum carries his name.

The collection turns on light and water, fitting for a port on the Channel. It holds one of the largest bodies of Impressionist and related painting in France, built around two local sons: Eugène Boudin, the beach-and-sky painter who taught the young Monet to work outdoors, and Raoul Dufy, whose bright regattas and seafronts fill several rooms.

Monet, who grew up here, painted the harbour sunrise that gave Impressionism its name just along this coast.