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The museum has mixed French-Russian roots. The idea of creating an art collection in Nice was expressed during a visit to the city by Emperor Napoleon III. For him it was a political step: according to the 1860 treaty with Piedmont-Sardinia (the predecessor of Italy), the territory of the county of Nice was ceded to France, and the emperor wanted to look honourable in the eyes of his new subjects. However, there was no building for the museum at the time, and its collection was first stored in the archives and the local library, then exhibited in not very suitable premises.

In 1878, the Kochubey couple, Prince Lev Viktorovich and Princess Elizaveta Vasilyevna, a dilettante composer who composed popular romances (for example, "I knew the eyes" to Tyutchev's poems), moved to Nice. It was Elizaveta Vasilyevna who bought a plot of land in Nice and started building a palace. Soon she got tired of this endeavour and in 1883 sold the unfinished building to the American industrialist James Thompson. In 1925, the city bought the villa. It became the home of the Palais des Arts, where the museum of the artist Jules Chéret was established. Gradually, the collection expanded with donations from many collectors, and Nice had the Museum of Fine Arts.

Its collection is housed on two floors. Entering, the visitor first of all crosses the former winter garden, which is now a patio, and gets to the exhibition of primitive paintings of Provence XVI-XVIII centuries. There is also a large room dedicated to the work of the Van Loo dynasty of painters. On the ground floor you can also see works by Agnolo Bronzino, Jan Bruegel the Elder, Abraham Blumart, Jean Honoré Fragonard. A magnificent monumental staircase leads to the first floor, where you will find a collection of 19th century academic paintings and sculpture, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. On this floor you can get acquainted with the works of Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Eugène Boudin, Alexandre Cabanel, Edouard Vuillard. There are also sculptures by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, François Rude, and Auguste Rodin.

The elegant palace of Kochubey, built on a grand scale, with its high ceilings and excellent lighting, itself gives the impression of a museum piece. Its first owners, Prince and Princess Kochubey, rest in the orthodox cemetery of Cocade in Nice. Walking through the front halls, one can mentally summon these two images out of the age-old darkness. The chords of a romance will sound slightly, the unknown life, in which Nice was something like a dacha for brilliant and self-confident Petersburgers, will whisper, and again there are only silent paintings and sculptures around.