ABBEY MUSEUM

Open all year round. january 1, May 1, November 1 & December 24, 25 & 31. Free for children under 6. Adults: €6.50 (reduced €5). Children (aged 6 to 15): €5.50. Family admission: €18.50 (2 adults + at least 1 child over 7). Vacation vouchers. Guided tour (discovery tour: + €2 per person. Free admission and guided tour on 1st Sunday of the month at 3pm). Free changing rooms. Parking lot and playground nearby.

This atypical place, located on the exact site of the former abbey of Saint-Claude (11th - 18th century), in a green setting, brings together within its walls three different worlds: the discovery of the figurative collection at the end of the 19th-20th centuries, the monastic sobriety of the archaeological basement presenting the remains of the old abbey and the temporary exhibition rooms which regularly offer a program that alternates exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.

With its audacious architecture open to the exterior landscape, this museum contains a collection of paintings and drawings from the end of the 19th century to the 1980s. Several generations of artists succeeded one another around Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Dufy and other painters affiliated with the School of Paris, including the donor painters, Guy Bardone and René Genis.

The interior spaces benefit from a particularly advanced aesthetic research: pure lines, clear colors, noble materials, large picture windows with a view on the mountainous landscape.

The visitor thus progresses through open and luminous spaces with an incredible panoramic view of the valley and the surrounding mountains.

Following the example of George Besson - an art critic from Saint-Claude, whose famous donation could not reach his native town as he would have wished - Guy Bardone (born in 1927), painter also native of Saint-Claude, has created a new exhibition.guy Bardone (born 1927), a painter also from Saint-Claude, and his friend René Genis (1922-2004), in turn built up an important collection over a period of fifty years, bringing together numerous artists from the School of Paris, which today constitutes the collection of the Abbey Museum. The donation was signed by the two artists and the mayor of Saint-Claude on April 4, 2002, at René Genis' property in Bandol.

Previously, as early as 1994, surveys had been carried out in order to detect archaeological remains that could be put to good use in the former abbey palace. from 1998, the excavations programmed and financed by the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles and the Conseil Régional de Franche-Comté allowed Sébastien Bully and his team from the CNRS and the APAHJ (association for the promotion of archaeology in the Haut-Jura) to be officially commissioned to carry out this research in 2002.

Thus was born the idea of creating in this place a museum likely to welcome the collection constituted by Bardone and Genis. The Abbey Museum officially received the designation "Musée de France" in 2004 and the building was classified as a historical monument the following year.

At the beginning of 2006, construction and rehabilitation work began, under the aegis of the architect Adelfo Scaranello for the entire building, and Paul Barnoud, chief architect of the Monuments Historiques, for the archaeological part. On October 25, 2008, the museum was officially inaugurated.