The Musée du Temps — the Museum of Time — occupies the 16th-century Palais Granvelle on the Grande Rue, one of the grandest Renaissance buildings in eastern France. The palace was built for Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, the most powerful minister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and its courtyard with three tiers of arcades gives you a sense of Renaissance-era wealth and ambition.
The museum's collection traces the history of timekeeping, with an emphasis on the watchmaking industry that made Besançon famous. From sundials and water clocks to the precision instruments that dominated Swiss and Franc-Comtois clockmaking in the 18th and 19th centuries, the collection is arranged to tell a genuinely engaging story rather than simply display objects. Worth a visit on a wet afternoon.