Musée Matisse (Nice)

Set in a red-ochre seventeenth-century villa on the Cimiez hill, this museum is devoted to the painter who spent much of his later life in Nice. Its collection spans his paintings, drawings, bronzes, and celebrated paper cut-outs, tracing the evolution of his bold colour and line. The villa overlooks an olive grove and the remains of a Roman settlement, linking modern art to the city's ancient past. Nearby stands the monastery where the artist is buried, making the hill a place of pilgrimage for admirers.