Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon

Push through the heavy doors off the square, and the noise of Lyon falls away almost at once. The traffic, the café chatter and the splash of the fountain outside become a soft hum. In their place you hear gravel under your shoes, the rustle of leaves, and perhaps a pigeon on a stone ledge. You are standing in a cloister garden, enclosed on four sides by pale honey-coloured walls. It feels less like a museum entrance and more like a private courtyard.

Welcome to the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. It is one of the largest art museums in France outside Paris. Its home is not a purpose-built gallery. It is a former abbey, the Palais Saint-Pierre, which faces the Place des Terreaux in the heart of the Presqu'île. That is the narrow strip of land between the Rhône and the Saône rivers. The building carries two lives at once — a religious house first, and a public museum second.

For centuries this was a convent for Benedictine nuns, the Dames de Saint-Pierre. Many of the women who entered came from wealthy and noble families. That explains the scale and polish of what you see. The abbey was largely rebuilt in the seventeenth century in a grand classical style, with long symmetrical facades and tall windows. Walk around the outside later and notice how the building presents itself to the city. It looks more like a palace than a place of prayer.

The French Revolution ended the convent's life. The nuns were dispersed, and church property passed to the state. Then, in the early nineteenth century, the French government decided that major regional cities should have public museums. Lyon was one of them, and the empty abbey became the home for its new collection. So the idea behind this place is quite radical for its time. Art that once belonged to churches and private families was now meant for everyone.

Let's stay in the garden for a moment. This was the nuns' cloister, a space for walking and quiet thought. Today it holds bronze sculptures among the trees, including works by Auguste Rodin. Many people in Lyon use this garden as a calm place to sit, and you do not always need a museum ticket to enter it. Look at the benches. You will often see students reading, office workers eating lunch, and older residents simply resting in the shade.

Here is the first surprise. Before you go upstairs, find the former refectory, the room where the nuns once ate their meals. It survives with its seventeenth century decoration. The walls and ceiling are covered with carved and painted religious scenes, in a rich baroque style — the dramatic, theatrical art of that period. Most visitors walk past on their way to the famous paintings. Yet this room is one of the few places where you can still feel the abbey as the nuns knew it.

Now climb the main staircase, and slow down as you go. The walls carry large murals by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, a painter born in Lyon in the nineteenth century. His style is calm and pale, with soft blues, chalky greens and flat, gentle light. The figures seem to move slowly, almost like a dream. Puvis influenced many younger artists, including painters who later broke away from traditional art. So this quiet staircase is an important link in the story of modern painting.

The collection itself covers a huge stretch of time. It runs from ancient Egypt to the twentieth century, and it fills dozens of rooms. Do not try to see it all in one visit. The Egyptian rooms are a good place to begin. They hold coffins, statues, everyday objects, and even large carved stone gateways from Egyptian temples. Standing beside a doorway that once opened onto a sacred space by the Nile is a strange experience inside a French abbey.

The painting galleries move through Europe century by century. You will find Italian Renaissance and Venetian works, with their deep reds and golden skin tones. You will see Flemish and Dutch painting, with careful detail and dark, glowing backgrounds. Look for names like Veronese, Rubens and Rembrandt on the labels. Notice how the light changes from room to room. In the earlier works, the light often comes from heaven. In later ones, it comes through an ordinary window.

The second surprise is the strength of the modern collection. Many visitors do not expect a former convent to hold Impressionist and later works of this quality. Here you can see paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, among others. Gauguin's Tahitian colours look almost loud after the calm of the older galleries. Stand back from the Impressionist canvases. Up close they are broken brushstrokes. From a few steps away, they become water, light and air.

Do not miss the former abbey church, which is also part of the museum. Its nave — the long central hall of a church — now holds a gallery of sculpture. The marble and plaster figures stand where the congregation once gathered. The space is tall and echoing, and the light falls in from high windows. It is a good place to notice how sculpture changes in natural light. Shadows move across faces as clouds pass over the city outside.

The museum also keeps quieter treasures that many people skip. There are rooms of decorative arts, with furniture, ceramics and objects of daily luxury. There is a large collection of coins and medals, small enough to hold in a hand, yet carrying the faces of rulers across many centuries. These rooms are often almost empty. If the main galleries feel crowded, they offer a calm pause and a different, more intimate scale of art.

When you leave, step out onto the Place des Terreaux and turn around. The long facade of the old abbey stretches along one side of the square. Across from it stands the City Hall of Lyon. In front of you is a large fountain by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor who also designed the Statue of Liberty in New York. Horses in the fountain seem to pull a chariot through the water. Few visitors make that connection while they stand here.

Take one last look back at the doorway you came through. Behind those walls, the garden is still quiet, and the nuns' old dining room is still decorated for a life that ended long ago. Out here, the square is full of movement — scooters, voices, the steady sound of water. Notice how the two worlds sit side by side, separated only by a door. As you walk on into the streets of Lyon, you carry a little of that calm with you.