Arles - Museum of Arles

(Local Name: Museon Arlaten) The Museon Arlaten was founded in 1899 by the famous Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral. The Palais de Laval-Castellane, in which it is housed, is built on the remains of an ancient basilica, and was first a nobleman's palace and then a Jesuit college. Mistral, a Nobel Prize winner of 1904, donated the amount of his prize to create in his native region a permanent museum. It is now the most important collection of Provençal folk art, displaying furniture, costumes, ceramics, tools and farming implements.