Pavillon de l'Arsenal

The Pavillon de l'Arsenal sits on land that once held a Celestine monastery before becoming a military depot for gunpowder and weapons. This location, known as the Arsenal, gives the building its name, though the structure you see today is a product of a different era entirely. It was built between eighteen seventy-eight and eighteen seventy-nine as a private museum for a timber merchant named Laurent-Louis Borniche. Borniche was an avid art collector who constructed this space to display his massive collection of over two thousand paintings to the public.