Musée du Petit Palais

The Musée du Petit Palais sits inside a fortress of pale stone, easily identified by the pointed arches and massive, crenelated walls facing the town square. This building served as the residence for cardinals and later the archbishop throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Avignon functioned as the seat of the papacy. In eighteen seventy-five, a local collector named Campana filled these vaulted rooms with hundreds of Italian and Avignon paintings, creating a collection that still defines the space today.