Photo : Sylvain NGR / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Musée national du Château de Pau
Birthplace of King Henry IV, born there in 1553, the former feudal fortress of the Viscounts of Béarn, turned into a royal palace by Marguerite d'Angoulême, sister of François I, and her husband Henri II d'Albret, heirs to the crown of Navarre, was entirely restored in the nineteenth century by Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III.
The museum brings together in an exceptional setting a unique artistic and historical ensemble. The royal apartments, fitted out and furnished in the mid-nineteenth century, are a remarkable witness to the decorative arts of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, and present, among other things, a sumptuous collection of sixteenth-century royal tapestries, as well as the rich collections gathered since 1945 to evoke the history and legend of the most popular of the kings of France.
