If you wanted to visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, where would you need to go?

While the Musée d'Orsay in Paris has often exhibited the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, it is to Albi in the south of France you would need to go to visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum.

Born of aristocratic parents in Albi, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), overcame his marked physical deformity - a congenital health condition attributed to inbreeding (his parents were first cousins) by exploiting ceaselessly his drawing skills which were demonstrated from a very early age. The artist was passionately interested in “nocturnal paradises” of all kinds - from opera to cabarets and brothels. He haunted the seedier side of Parisian bohemia and the Montmartre sketching, painting, observing and there, free from all moral or social judgement, he lived a life of excess until his death which was attributed to alcoholism.

His mother contributed funds to purchase the Palais de la Berbie (Berber's Palace), formerly the Bishops' Palace in the historic centre of Albi and thereafter turned it into a museum in her son's honour. The museum opened in 1922 and contains over a thousand pieces of Toulouse-Loutrec's art.