Musée Matisse Nice: €10, closed Tuesdays, shut at 17:00 from 1 November, and what to see

💡 The Short Version: The Musée Matisse costs €10 and is closed on Tuesdays. From 1 November it closes at 17:00, and the ticket office shuts 30 minutes before. Suitcases and backpacks are not accepted under the museum’s security rules, and the lockers are not available for them, so leave luggage at the hotel. Under-18s, students and job-seekers go free with proof; the 4-day Museums Pass is €15 and the French Riviera Pass includes entry. The Matisse and Alex Katz exhibition runs 28 October 2026 to 18 January 2027 and is included in the ticket. Bus 5, 16, 18, 33 or 40 stops at the door in Cimiez. Prices are in euros. Or book a tour: the Old Town and Castle Hill walking tourad is from €26 and the hop-on hop-off busad from €24 (GetYourGuide).

Tickets and prices

Prices are the museum’s own, from its practical information page. The ticket is valid for the day you choose; the museum’s ticket office says it is not a skip-the-line ticket. Individuals can buy at the door or through the City’s museums ticket office.

Free with proof: under-18s, students, job-seekers, holders of a disability card and one companion, ICOM and ICOMOS members, museum curators, journalists and tourist guides.

• The Museums Pass pays back with one more museum. Matisse and the Masséna museum cost €20 on single tickets against €15 on the pass; Matisse and a €5 museum cost €15, which only breaks even. Best museums in Nice has the sums.
• The Chagall museum is not on the Museums Pass. It is a national museum with its own ticket: the Chagall museum page.
• The French Riviera Pass pays back on a day with about €30 of paid sights: is it worth it?

Guided visits

The museum’s adult tours and family tours cost €7 on top of entry and run in French. For another language, write to publics.musee.matisse@ville-nice.fr. Workshops for adults, families and children are €9. The museum has a free audio guide through the Bloomberg Connects app; bring headphones.

GetYourGuide does not sell entry tickets for the museum. The listings that include it are private guided tours.

What to see

The museum is in a Genoese-style villa completed in 1695, in the olive grove at Cimiez. The coloured façade has painted trompe l’oeil decoration, and an extension was added when the museum reopened in June 1993. Matisse died in Nice in 1954, and the museum opened in the villa in 1963 after gifts from the artist and his family to the City.

1. The studio objects. About 130 pieces from the artist’s studio: furniture, textiles, a moucharabieh (a carved lattice screen), a Moorish perfume burner, Chinese vases and a Tibetan tanka painting. Matisse painted these into his pictures, and Louis Aragon called them his “palette of objects”.
2. The early and Fauve work. His first painting, a still life with books from 1890, and the Fauve period, when painters let colour carry the picture. The museum also keeps the preparatory drawings and paintings for La Danse (1930 to 1933), Tahiti I (1935) and La Verdure (1935 to 1943).
3. The cut-outs. The museum holds 38 cut-outs, the technique of his last years, and over 400 unused paper elements given by the family in 2012.
4. The sculptures. 57 of them; the museum says it is the only one in Europe with almost all his sculpture. Le Serf, the bronze he worked on from 1900 to 1903, is the only male nude among them.
5. The exhibition. “Henri Matisse - Alex Katz. The Silence of Painting” is a new display of the museum’s collection, designed with Katz, who first saw Matisse’s Interiors of Vence in New York in 1949.
6. The forecourt and the grove. Alexander Calder’s Stabile-mobile stands on the forecourt of the villa, and the olive grove around it is open to the public.

The villa of the Musée Matisse, with its painted façade. Photo: takato marui, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The collection totals 31 paintings, 454 drawings and prints, 38 cut-outs and 57 sculptures. The museum rotates its permanent collection, so a particular work may be in storage or on loan.

The order that works: go inside first, then the olive grove, then the Roman arena and baths next door, which the Cimiez page sets out. Allow about an hour for the museum. What to skip: the French-language tours, unless you speak French.

Hours and practical information

The museum is open daily except Tuesday, and is closed on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May and 25 December. The ticket office closes 30 minutes before closing.

• Getting there: the museum is at 164 avenue des Arènes de Cimiez. Buses 5, 16, 18, 33 and 40 stop at Arènes / Musée Matisse. Lime and Pony bikes are available. There is parking on avenue du Monastère and place du Monastère.
• The entrance: the main entrance is on level -2, up the grand staircase outside the modern wing. For step-free access, enter the garden by the gate at 164 avenue des Arènes or the one on boulevard de Cimiez, then use the southern forecourt of the villa.
• Security: everyone passes a metal detector and a bag check. Suitcases, backpacks, oversized bags and bulky items are not permitted inside, and the cloakroom lockers are not available.
• Rules: no food or drink, no flash and photographs for personal use only. Animals are not allowed, except guide dogs. The museum shop is on level -1 and opens 10:00 to 18:00.
• Eating: the Kiosque des Arènes in the olive grove serves Cuisine Niçoise.
• The one thing that ruins a visit: arriving on a Tuesday, or arriving with a suitcase or backpack.

The Chagall museum is a separate trip: the Chagall museum page has its lunch closure from 13:00 to 14:30 in November and December 2026. The Cimiez walk links the two museums with the monastery and the Roman baths. Cimiez puts the Roman site, the monastery gardens and Matisse’s grave on the same hill. What to book in Nice has the closed days for every museum, and things to do in Nice lists the rest. Nice public transport has the bus fares. For a bed, see where to stay in Nice, and 3 days in Nice fits the museum round the closed days.