France Guide
Languedoc
The Musée des Augustins
Opening time: Thurs– Tues 10am–6pm, Wed 10am–9pm
Website: www.augustins.org
Price: €3
Address: Junction of rue de Metz and rue d'Alsace-Lorraine Outwardly unattractive, the nineteenth-century building incorporates two surviving cloisters of an Augustinian priory (one now restored as a monastery garden) and contains outstanding collections of Romanesque and medieval sculpture, much of it saved from the now-vanished churches of Toulouse's golden age. Many of the pieces form a fascinating, highly naturalistic display of contemporary manners and fashions: merchants with forked beards touching one another's arms in a gesture of familiarity, and the Virgin represented as a pretty, bored young mother looking away from the Child who strains to escape her hold.