The story
The fine-arts museum of Angers, in the Loire valley, lives inside a building almost as interesting as its contents: the Logis Barrault, a grand late-15th-century mansion built for a mayor and royal treasurer, later a bishops' residence and a school. A long restoration reopened it in 2004, threading modern galleries through the medieval stone.
The collection runs from the 14th century to the present, strongest in French painting and 18th-century work, gathered partly from Revolutionary seizures like most French provincial museums. There is also a fine holding of local decorative arts.
Angers keeps its most famous artist, the sculptor David d'Angers, in a separate gallery nearby, set under the glass roof of a ruined 13th-century abbey church, so a single visit to this town takes in both a Renaissance mansion and a medieval nave full of plaster casts.
