The Musée du Palais des Evêques de Saint-Lizier reopened its doors to the public in April 2011, after several years of work and restructuring.
The collections presented in a superb setting invite the visitor to discover the history of the Bishops' Palace, the Gallo-Roman city of Saint-Lizier and the Couserans through the vestiges of its past, from Antiquity to the present day.
Votive altars, funerary stelae, sarcophagi, Merovingian buckle plates, capital columns, religious art objects, and everyday objects...) are displayed within a sleek, modern museum setting where visitors are invited to touch (the tactile room), listen (the storytelling room), and contemplate (the landscape room).
Finally, and for the first time, the Palace’s psychiatric history will be recounted in a room entirely dedicated to this topic. In the 1800s, the Bishops’ Palace became a workhouse and later the Saint-Lizier psychiatric hospital. It was then one of those places that both welcomed and confined the mentally ill, and thus served as both a witness to and a participant in the extraordinary transformation that psychiatry underwent.
The Ariège Sistine Chapel
In addition to the museum tour, visitors can explore the Notre-Dame-de-la-Sède Cathedral, also known as the “Ariège Sistine Chapel,” which has recently been restored. Inside, a superb collection of early 16th-century paintings was uncovered beneath a layer of plaster.
And also the temporary exhibition hall, which hosts thematic, historical, or artistic exhibitions related to the site and the museum’s collections.
The museum also has the advantage of being located in a beautiful medieval town with a rich architectural heritage.
Museum of the Palace of the Bishops
route de Montjoie
09190 Saint-Lizier
Tel: 05 61 05 10 10
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(free version)
