Musée Goya — Musée d'Art Hispanique

The Musée Goya is housed in the former Bishop's Palace and holds the most important collection of Spanish painting in France outside Paris. The three Francisco de Goya works at its centre are the headline — the Portrait of Philip IV in Hunting Costume, The Self-Portrait with Spectacles, and the engraved series of the Caprichos — but the rest is substantial: Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco-school work, and a fine room of 17th-century Spanish still lifes.

The setting helps. The state apartments of the palace have been kept as 17th-century galleries, with the original stuccoed ceilings, and the windows on the upper floor look out over Le Nôtre's formal garden below. Allow two unhurried hours; the museum is closed on Mondays and admission is modest.

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A story
The core of the collection came from a single Castres-born bequest in 1894: Marcel Briguiboul, a local painter who had spent years in Spain, left three Goyas and a dozen other Spanish works to his hometown. The town built a museum around them. The collection was added to throughout the 20th century and is now the second most important holding of Spanish art in France after the Louvre.