The Musée des Beaux-Arts is housed in the old Présidial — the regional law court — facing place Carnot. The collection covers seventeenth- to twentieth-century French and European painting, with strong holdings of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish work and a small but good nineteenth-century French room (Courbet, Chassériau).
It is a calm refuge after the Cité. Entry is free and the rooms are usually quiet.