Versailles à Arras: a consummate symbol of cultural decentralisation

Under a major partnership with the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Region and the city of Arras, signed in July 2011, the Château de Versailles has engaged in a process of cultural decentralisation.

Initiated by the Regional Council, this project is coming to a region which asserts itself as the Region of Museums, boasting as it does the Louvre-Lens, 43 museums labelled "Musée de France" by the minister of culture and over 150 themed museums.

Over a 10-year period, major and sometimes little known works from the Château de Versailles will be placed on public display in a series of exhibitions at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras, inside the Saint-Vaast Abbey.

With over 300,000 visitors, the inaugural exhibition "Roulez Carrosses!" (March 2012 – November 2013) launched and illustrated this extraordinary partnership with the spectacular presentation of the collection of horse-drawn coaches from the Château de Versailles.

Starting on the 27 ^th of September, the Musée des Beaux-Arts is hosting a new exhibition which promises to be a principle event: around one hundred masterpieces from the collections of the Château de Versailles - some on loan for the very first time - will be on show in Arras for eighteen months until the 20 ^th of March 2016.