The Palais Lascari is one of the most curious buildings in Nice. It is located in the heart of the Old Town on the rue Droit, so narrow that from the street it is impossible to appreciate the beauty of the palace. But inside, the tourist is greeted by chic interiors, magnificent frescoes and the Musical Instruments Museum, the second richest collection in France.
Neither the exact year of construction nor the name of the architect of the palace is known. It is only clear that it belongs to the first half of the 17th century and is in the Italian Baroque style. Until 1802 it was owned by the ancient noble family Lascari Ventimiglia, whose genealogy dates back to the XIII century, when Guillaume-Pierre 1st, Count of Ventimiglia, married Eudocia Lascari, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Theodore II. By the end of the 19th century, the palace had fallen into disrepair, and in 1942 it was bought by the city to create a regional museum of arts and folk traditions.
The palace was not renovated until 1963, a work that took seven years. Now its interiors make a strong impression: monumental marble staircases, arcades and galleries decorated with numerous statues, many frescoes with mythological subjects dating back to the middle of the XVII century. Flemish tapestries, 17th- and 18th-century furniture and fine mouldings are also abundantly represented in the palace rooms.
In 1904, the industrialist and amateur musician Antoine Gautier died in Nice and bequeathed his huge collection of musical instruments to the city. The collection was stored successively in various museums and the Nice Conservatory, but in 2001 it was given to the Palais Lascari to create a museum of musical instruments. It opened to the public only recently, in 2011.
Today, the museum's collection includes more than five hundred old musical instruments. Among them are such rarities as several violas d'amour of the XVII-XVIII centuries, William Turner's Viola (1652), baroque guitars, including the oldest surviving French guitar from Avignon from 1645, a rare set of clarinets, oriental musical instruments.
There is another unusual object in the Lascari Palace: on the ground floor is recreated in the smallest detail pharmacy, which was here since 1738.
