Best museums in Nice: prices, closed days, the €15 Museums Pass and the two that are shut

💡 The Short Version: No City museum is free. Matisse, Masséna and Chéret are €10; the Photography, Archaeology, Naïve Art, Natural History and Lascaris museums are €5. The 4-day Museums Pass is €15 and pays back with two of the €10 museums. Tuesday closes Matisse, Masséna, Lascaris, Archaeology and Naïve Art, and the national Chagall museum. Monday closes the Chéret, Photography and Natural History museums. MAMAC and the Terra Amata museum are closed. Under-18s, students and job-seekers go free with proof. The Naïve Art museum opens only from 10:00 to 12:30. 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 City’s own, from the museums ticket office and each museum’s page on nice.fr. Hours are those in force from 1 November 2026.

Groups of 10 or more pay €8 for a €10 museum and €4 for a €5 one. 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. Residents of the Métropole get a free 3-year pass.

• Tuesday: the museums open are the Chéret, Photography and Natural History. Matisse, Chagall, Masséna, Lascaris, Archaeology and Naïve Art are shut.
• Monday: the Chéret, Photography and Natural History museums are shut, and the six others are open. The Chagall museum shuts for lunch.
• Public holidays: the Matisse, Archaeology, Lascaris and Photography museums are closed on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May and 25 December.

The Museums Pass

The 4-day Nice Museums Pass is €15 (€10 each for a group of 10 or more) and gives access for 96 hours. It is valid at the Matisse, Masséna, Chéret, Photography, Archaeology, Naïve Art, Natural History and Lascaris museums. It does not cover the Chagall museum, which is national, or the Russian cathedral, the Bellandarium, the Tour Saint-François, the archaeological crypt or the Sports Museum. Buy it at the ticket office or at a museum.

The French Riviera Pass is a different product. It costs €30 for 24 hours, covers the Chagall museum and the cathedral, and pays only on a day with about €30 of paid sights: is it worth it? For museums alone, the €15 Museums Pass is cheaper.

Tours worth paying for

The City sells its own tickets, and GetYourGuide does not list entry tickets for the Matisse, Masséna, Chéret or Chagall museums. The one museum ticket it does list is the National Sports Museum’s, at the museum’s own price.

National Sports Museum ticket

From €8 · 4.5 stars from 41 reviews

Ticket to Musée National du Sportad costs the same €8 as the permanent exhibition at the museum’s own ticket office.

What to see

Musée Masséna

65 rue de France · €10 · closed Tuesday · 11:00 to 18:00

A Belle Époque villa on the Promenade des Anglais, built from 1898 to 1901 by the Danish architect Hans-Georg Tersling for Prince Victor d’Essling, a grandson of the Niçois marshal André Masséna. It became a museum in 1921 and shows the art and history of the Riviera from Nice’s union with France in 1860 to the end of the Belle Époque, with Napoleon’s death mask and Josephine’s mother-of-pearl diadem among the objects. The ground floor is a work in itself, with salons decorated by the architects Tersling and Aaron Messiah and furnished with First Empire pieces. The historic garden, laid out by Édouard André, adjoins the Negresco.

The Musée Masséna in its garden on the Promenade des Anglais. Photo: Zairon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret

33 avenue des Baumettes · €10 · closed Monday · 11:00 to 18:00

The fine-arts museum has been in a mansion built for the Ukrainian Princess Kotschoubey since 1928, with a monumental marble staircase. The paintings and sculpture run from the 12th to the 20th century and include Bronzino’s Crucifixion (1540), Raoul Dufy’s The Yellow Console with Two Windows (1948) and Carpeaux’s Neapolitan Fisherman (1858). It is the museum to choose on a Tuesday, when Matisse and Masséna are shut.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret on avenue des Baumettes. Photo: Miniwark, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Palais Lascaris

15 rue Droite · €5 · closed Tuesday · 10:00 to 18:00

A Baroque palace built from 1648 for the Lascaris-Vintimille family, in the old town. The City calls it the most remarkable civil Baroque monument in Nice, for its monumental staircase with frescoes and its luxuriously decorated salons. It also holds a collection of old musical instruments. Visit booklets in English are available at the reception desk, and a guided visit is €7 on top of entry. It fits a morning on the old town walk.

Archaeology museum, Cimiez

160 avenue des Arènes de Cimiez · €5 · closed Tuesday · 10:00 to 17:00

The museum stands on the Roman city of Cemenelum and shows finds from three bath complexes, a residential quarter and an amphitheatre. Its small bronze Silenus mask of the 1st century BC and a dancing faun found in Cimiez are among the objects. The northern baths keep a cold room, the frigidarium, that stands over 10 metres high. The ticket office closes 30 minutes early, and buses 5, 18 and 33 stop at Arènes / Musée Matisse. Cimiez sets it beside the Matisse museum and the monastery gardens.

Photography museum (Charles Nègre)

1 place Pierre Gautier · €5 · closed Monday · 10:00 to 18:00

A museum in the old town with monographic exhibitions of major photographers, and a gallery given to regional photography. It is open on Tuesdays.

Naïve Art museum

23 avenue de Fabron · €5 · closed Tuesday · 10:00 to 12:30 only

The Anatole Jakovsky museum is in the Château Sainte-Hélène, the former home of the perfumer François Coty, in a park of rare trees. It opened in 1982 after a donation by Anatole and Renée Jakovsky and holds 3,000 works from about thirty countries. It is open mornings only.

Natural History museum

60 bis boulevard Risso · €5 · closed Monday · 10:00 to 18:00

More than a million specimens in botany, zoology and geology, with a permanent route from the deep sea to the mountains of the Nice region. A guided visit is €7 on top of entry. It is open on Tuesdays.

National Sports Museum

6 allée Camille Muffat, in the Allianz Riviera stadium · €8 for the permanent or the temporary exhibition, €10 for both

The museum is in the stadium and is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00, from September to May, and daily from June to August; it is closed on 25 December, 1 January and 1 May. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month from September to May and with the French Riviera Pass. Tram line 3 and bus 11 (stop La Carrière) serve the stadium.

The two that are shut

MAMAC, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art at Place Yves Klein, closed for renovation on 7 January 2024. The Terra Amata prehistory museum at 25 boulevard Carnot has been closed since 15 April 2026 for accessibility work.

The order that works: on a Tuesday, the Chéret museum, the Photography museum and the Natural History museum; on a Monday, Matisse and Masséna with the Museums Pass; on a Wednesday to Friday, the Cimiez hill with Matisse, Archaeology and the Chagall museum before 13:00. What to skip: the Natural History and Naïve Art museums unless you have the pass or children; the Matisse and Masséna museums are the two to pay for.

Practical information

• Tickets: the City sells tickets at each museum and through its online ticket office; the Matisse museum says its online ticket is not a skip-the-line ticket.
• Bags: the Matisse museum accepts no suitcases or backpacks and has no lockers for them, and the Chagall museum’s cloakroom takes only bags up to 20 x 25 x 40 cm. Leave luggage at the hotel.
• Getting there: the Matisse and Archaeology museums are on the Cimiez hill, served by buses 5, 16, 18, 33 and 40; the Cimiez walk links them with the Chagall museum. The Masséna museum is on the Promenade des Anglais, and the Lascaris and Photography museums are in the old town.
• The one thing that ruins a visit: planning a Tuesday around Matisse, Masséna or Chagall, or arriving at the Naïve Art museum after 12:30.

What to book in Nice has the closed days for every sight, and the Matisse museum page and the Chagall museum page cover the two biggest. Things to do in Nice lists everything else, free things to do in Nice lists what costs nothing, and Nice with kids says which museums suit children. 3 days in Nice builds the museums into a plan. For a bed, see where to stay in Nice.