Palais Lascaris

The Palais Lascaris is a seventeenth-century aristocratic building in Nice, France. Currently, it is a musical instrument museum. Located in the old town of Nice, it houses a collection of over 500 instruments, which makes it France’s second most important collection after the Musée de la Musique de la Philharmonie in Paris.

Built in the first half of the seventeenth century and altered in the eighteenth century, the palace was owned by the Vintimille-Lascaris family until 1802.

In 1942, it was bought by the city of Nice to create a museum.

Restorations began in 1962 and were completed in 1970, when the museum was opened to the public.

In 2001, the historical musical instrument collections of the city of Nice were transferred from the Musée Masséna to the Palais Lascaris with the project of transforming it into a music museum.

In 2011, the permanent exhibition of musical instruments was finally opened to the public.

Today the palace devotes its exhibition space to the permanent exhibit of the collection of historical musical instruments, built around the bequest of Antoine Gautier (1825–1904).

The historical musical instrument collection is formed around the bequest of the nineteenth-century niçois collector Antoine Gautier.

Antoine Gautier was born in Nice in 1825, son of Joseph Octave Gautier, rich wood merchant, and Félicité Rossetti, daughter of the préfet Rossetti and granddaughter of the senator Rossetti Following studies in classics at the Jesuit College (today the lycée Masséna), he became a jurist. An amateur musician, Antoine Gautier played the violin and the viola, and at the age of eighteen founded a quartet with his brother Raymond, in which Antoine played the viola. At that time he began to hold a musical salon and also began collecting instruments in his home on the rue Papacino :

"Rue Papacino, we were in the Temple. Everything called for solemn consideration, the large library where the carefully bound and arranged collections were preserved alongside rare editions; the display cases [exhibiting] the gongs, hawaiien guitars, marine trumpets, archlutes, quintons, oboes d'amore, instruments by Maggini or Guarnieri, the four large oak music desks and the imposing Pleyel piano, elicited the visitors' admiration.

Text adapted from “Palais Lascaris” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Palais Lascaris ranks #3,117 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #231 of the 524 mapped in France. Founded 1970 — one of 169 atlas entries founded in the 20th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,821 times in the last 60 days, more than 64% of the atlas. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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