Musée de Picardie
Housed in a Second Empire palace purpose-built for its collections in 1867, the Musée de Picardie is one of the most beautiful and underrated regional museums in France — its grand staircase alone, commissioned from Puvis de Chavannes, is worth the trip from Paris.
A Staircase Painted by a Master
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the symbolist painter who inspired Gauguin and Seurat, covered the museum's monumental staircase with a cycle of allegorical murals in the 1880s. They are among the finest 19th-century decorative paintings in any French public building, and almost nobody outside France knows they exist.
The ground-floor archaeology rooms display extraordinary Gallo-Roman bronzes and Merovingian jewellery excavated from the Somme valley — objects of such refinement they challenge every cliché about the 'Dark Ages'.
Flemish Masters & Medieval Panels
The painting galleries hold a remarkable collection of Flemish and Dutch Golden Age works — El Greco, Fragonard, Quentin Matsys — alongside a room of medieval painted panels from the cathedral chapter that glow with the same intensity as illuminated manuscripts.
A highlight is the collection of puy d'Amiens, large devotional paintings commissioned annually by the city's guilds between 1499 and 1628, forming a unique visual chronicle of Renaissance Amiens.
After the Renovation
The museum completed a major renovation in 2020 and the rehang is superb: clear thematic narratives, excellent lighting and bilingual labelling make it accessible to international visitors.
The museum café opens onto a garden courtyard — a peaceful lunch spot after a morning at the cathedral.
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