Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice

This guide to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice centers on Jules Chéret, the aging painter who invented the modern poster and spent his final years working from a rented room in this city. It traces his color-lithograph scenes of Parisian nightlife, and then the building itself, a private party palace begun in 1878, abandoned unfinished, and later bought by an American industrialist. You'll hear how the city took it over in 1925 and turned it into a museum bearing Chéret's name. Wander the painted-ceiling rooms where leisure is still being sold, just framed differently now.