Musée du Palais Lascaris

The Palais Lascaris is a seventeenth-century aristocratic mansion in the heart of Nice's Old Town. Originally built in the first third of the seventeenth century and remodeled in the eighteenth century, the property belonged to the Vintimille-Lascaris family until 1802. The city of Nice acquired the building in 1942 with the aim of turning it into a museum. After extensive restoration work that lasted from 1962 to 1970, the house opened its doors to the public for the first time. Its final transformation into a specialized museum of musical instruments took place in the 2000s, when the city's historic collections were moved here from the Musée Masséna in 2001. The permanent exhibition of the instruments finally opened to the public in 2011.

Today the palace houses one of the most important collections of historic musical instruments in France, second in importance in the country only to the Philharmonie de Paris. The heart of the collection is the bequest of Antoine Gautier, a collector from Nice who died in 1904. Gautier, a lawyer and passionate musician, had founded a quartet in his youth and hosted a famous music salon at his home on Rue Papacino, which was also visited by luminaries such as Gabriel Fauré and Eugène Ysaÿe. In his will he left the city of Nice more than 225 instruments as well as a rare music library, on the condition that the upkeep of the collection be entrusted to a professional violin maker.

Today the collection comprises more than 500 exhibits that offer a fascinating journey through the history of music. You can admire rare treasures such as a tenor sackbut from 1581, various violas d'amore by Italian and German masters of the eighteenth century, and extremely rare baroque guitars. Particularly noteworthy are the early harps by Sébastien Érard, which document the development of the modern harp, as well as a playable masterpiece by Antonio de Torres from 1884. Instruments by Adolphe Sax, including a saxophone quartet, and a large selection of keyboard instruments from the eighteenth to the twentieth century are also on display. The collection is continually enriched by further acquisitions by the city and is part of the international online project MIMO.