In 1963, this beautiful old Italian villa was transformed into a museum honoring Henri Matisse, one of the 20th century’s greatest painters. Matisse came to Nice for the light and made the city his home, living in the Hotel Beau Rivage and on the cours Saleya, and dying in Cimiez in 1954. Most of the pieces in the museum’s permanent collection—including Nude in an Armchair with a Green Plant (1937) and Blue Nude IV (1952)—were created in Nice. Artworks are interspersed with Matisse’s personal possessions, such as ceramic vases and antique furniture, as well as scale models of his architectural masterpiece, Vence’s Chapelle du Rosaire.