Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille

This guide to the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Marseille starts behind the building, at a monumental fountain of stone bulls and river goddesses, and traces why it exists: an 1835 cholera outbreak that exposed a city drinking from fouled wells. You'll hear how engineer Franz Mayor de Montricher revived a centuries-old plan to bring water from the Durance river, and how architect Henri Esperandieu, also behind Notre-Dame de la Garde, built the museum wings around the result. It follows the decade of digging that followed, and the sculptors who turned the arrival of water into allegory.