Sightseeing and culture

Grand Chalon’s exceptional heritage allows you to stroll through the historic districts around the cathedral, discover the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville and the Place de Beaune. Museums complete this rich cultural experience.

Vivant Denon Museum: A talented writer and engraver, Dominique Vivant Denon was Director General of the Louvre Museum, and is today considered a great precursor of museology, art history and Egyptology. Founded in the 19th century, the Chalonnais museum that bears his name houses fine collections of archaeology (including a magnificent sculpture of a lion striking down a gladiator), fine arts (masterpieces of 17th-century Neapolitan painting and the Rembrandt school), and a collection of woodcuts unique in France. The graphic art collection includes over 2,000 drawings, engravings and lithographs.

For the Musée Niépce, photography is at once a technical, aesthetic and social object. Its ambition is to explain the driving forces behind photography, from its invention by Niépce (1827) to the digital image. The museum’s collections bring together nearly 3 million photographs and objects, offering the possibility of an ever-changing itinerary. The centerpiece of the collections is the world’s first camera, used by Niépce. The museum also regularly renews its temporary exhibitions, giving pride of place to contemporary art. Chalon-sur-Saône is both the birthplace of its inventor and a showcase for today’s photography.