Musée Paul-Dupuy — Attraction in Toulouse

This is a fabulous little museum with well thought out exhibits and a truly impressive collection. Not necessarily wheelchair friendly as the two sub-basements are only accessible by staircase, but it's a 15th-century building, so I think they can be forgiven for that. We had deliberately planned to go to the museum at a time we could attend one of the spotlight talks, because the piece interested us. I'm so glad we did. The docent was interesting, engaging, articulate and funny. She also stayed well beyond the allotted half hour, answering questions about other exhibits on display. If you can time your visit to coincide with one of these talks (and speak french) I whole-heartedly recommend it. The concept is basically a 30 minute in-depth dive on one specific piece in the collection (in our case a reproduction Mucha in pyrogravure). It's completely free, so there are no extra charges over and above the price of the entry ticket, and we genuinely found her fascinating. The museum itself wasn't that expensive, considering the quality of the exhibits and how they were laid out. If we were to have one complaint it was that in some places, especially the faïence room, the pieces were unlabelled and displayed out of chronological order, so without the accompanying documents, you had no idea what you were looking at. That said, the documents were well explained and we did read most of them on our trip around the museum. The docent that did the talk openly advocated for visitors to come a few times a year - apparently several exhibits are switched out every 6 - 12 weeks and the temporary exhibit changes from time to time. With an annual subscription to both the permanent and temporary exhibits costing only €20, it seems silly not to subscribe! For reference, a single pass to both exhibits costs €8 per person, so you'd only have to go 3 times a year to have saved money. Definitely worth it in my opinion. Honestly a delightful little find, with a collection far exceeding what we expected. "Precious and fine arts" doesn't really give you a flavour of what's on display. Some of the more poignant pieces we saw were a set of hand-carved wooden spoons from the trenches of world war one. Fine art? No. Precious materials? No. But valuable and worth viewing for their place in history? Absolutely! I also loved the immersive experience in the feather exhibit, where you can walk into one of the pieces of art and sway or dance to make music. It was definitely an otherworldly vibe. Would...

This is a museum of "arts précieux" which, as far as I can tell, isn't an actual term in use outside of this institution. Don't expect artwork and you won't be disappointed. You have to go in understanding what it is - the private collection of a wealthy man from a hundred years ago. There's a lot of clocks, a lot of porcelains, some nice furniture, randomly a throne Napoleon used hanging on a wall unnoticed. It's a vaguely interesting cabinet of curiosities but there isn't really anything here that's going to move or enlighten you, it's just a bunch of stuff, not really art, unless you're extremely into watchmaking. The moving picture exhibit in the basement is nice and interactive, but the lighting is too dark and it was hard to appreciate many of the antiques there.

The temporary exhibit space upstairs was a collection of traditional style Chinese ink paintings done in a modern, French inflected style by a local Chinese artist which was nice and novel, and definitely the highlight of the...

Located in a small side street in the vibrant historic city of Toulouse is the Paul Dupuy Museum ... For only €5 entrance you will be treated to a real pot pourie of precious art and unique collectables ... Two floors above and one below display a priceless variety of objects de art ; boasting an enormous collection of clocks , watches and statues ... In the cellar is a display of pre Lumiere projectors and a very entertaining black and white 1920s short film starring the legendary Buster Keaton in a humourous 'Red Indian V White Man' tongue in cheek spoof ... Religious releques , antique porcelain , weapons , period furniture and costumes , even an ornately carved grand Jesuit Pharmacy from the 17th century in immaculate condition and lots more make the Paul Dupuy Museum a marvelous highlight of you cultural tour...