Lascaris Palace - one of the most interesting buildings of Nice. It is located in the heart of Old Town on Rue Droite, so narrow that from the street to appreciate the beauty of the palace is absolutely impossible. But inside the tourist meet chic interiors, magnificent frescoes and Musical Instrument Museum - the second richest collection in France.

Neither the exact year of construction, nor the name of the architect of the palace is not known. What is clear is that it belongs to the first half of the XVII century in the style of the Italian Baroque. Until 1802 it was owned by an old noble family Lascaris-Ventimiglia, whose genealogy is conducted from the XIII century, when Pierre Guillaume 1st, Count of Ventimiglia, married the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Theodore II Lascaris Evdokia. By the end of the XIX century palace fell into decay, and in 1942 it was bought by the city to create here a regional museum of arts and popular traditions.

Repairing the palace began only in 1963, work took seven years. Now its interiors are impressive: the monumental marble staircase, arcades and galleries, decorated with numerous statues and many frescoes with mythological subjects relating to the middle of XVII century. The rooms of the palace in abundance and Flemish tapestries, furniture XVII-XVIII centuries, the thin stucco.

In 1904, in Nice, died industrialist and amateur musician Antoine Gauthier, bequeathed to the city a huge collection of musical instruments. The collection was kept consistently in various museums and the Conservatory of Nice, but in 2001 it passed the palace Lascaris to create here a museum of musical instruments. It was opened to the public recently in 2011.

Today the museum's collection includes more than five hundred of ancient musical instruments. Among them - such rarities as multiple violas d'amore XVII-XVIII centuries, viola William Turner (1652), baroque guitar, including the oldest surviving French guitar from Avignon in 1645, a rare set of clarinets, oriental musical instruments.

There in the palace Lascaris and another unusual object on the ground floor is recreated in minute detail a pharmacy located here since 1738.