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Lille's Palais des Beaux-Arts - the UK's"new local museum"

6th December 2007

The arrival of high-speed rail travel between the UK and Lille has brought a "new and rather grand local museum" to British art lovers.

According to art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, the real achievement of the Eurostar connection to Lille has been to bring us closer to the Palais des Beaux-Arts, which houses an enviable number of masterpieces of French, Flemish, Dutch and Spanish art.

With Lille now reachable from London in approximately 90 minutes, a collection that includes masterpieces by Chardin, Delacroix, Goya, Veronese and de Witte in its horde of 650 paintings is now easier to view than ever.

In Graham-Dixon's eyes, the museum's greatest acquisition has been Donatello's bas-relief The Feast of Herod, which benefits greatly from the imaginative lighting installed in the medieval and Renaissance department.

"There is probably no other museum in the world where it is possible to appreciate and explore the subtleties of Donatello's carving as fully as this," he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph's magazine Seven.

Visitors to the Palais des Beaux-Arts will find the building easy to reach from Lille's railway stations. Walkable in ten to 15 minutes, the museum can also be reached by alighting at the République on line 1 of the Metro.

Experience the treasures of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

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