Visit Beauvais

Renaissance. Gates of modernity
March 21 to November 30, 2025

With the 16th-century palace once again open to the public, the MUDO-Musée de l’Oise is celebrating the Renaissance with an exhibition devoted to this historic period, during which a powerful burst of creativity swept across the whole of Europe, helping to shape the modern world.
The Renaissance refers to a particularly innovative trend that shaped the challenges of Europe?s changing societies for over two centuries, to an awareness of renewal driven by reflection on Man and the world, reflected in an unprecedented scientific and intellectual boom, and to a return to our roots.
Beginning in Italy, the Renaissance saw an irrepressible surge in creativity that spread to France and its various provinces from the 15th century onwards, followed by Spain and Northern Europe, with Flanders and Germany. Common trends emerged in these different creative centers, such as the emergence of new subjects, some borrowed from the rediscovery of Antiquity and its myths, and the development of genres with a promising future, such as landscape and portraiture.
A new artistic, philosophical and scientific sensibility was emerging: it was the era of scientific discoveries and revolutions, such as the printing press, that encouraged the spread of these new trends and anchored European societies in an unprecedented modernity.
The exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures, prints, ceramics and objets d?art to rediscover the key features of this period of profound historical, intellectual and artistic upheaval. This journey between Flanders, Italy and France, in the company of such prestigious artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Paolo Veronese and Antoine Caron, gives the MUDO-Musée de l?Oise the opportunity to bring to light works that have not been exhibited for many years, while celebrating its own renaissance

Curator: Alexandre Estaquet-Legrand, heritage curator and director of the MUDO-Musée de l’Oise

The 9 panels created by Beauvais?s Municipal Archaeology Department reveal the richness of the Maladrerie Saint-Lazare, and provide an insight into the identity of a medieval leper colony and its practices. The exhibition is the fruit of studies of the various excavations carried out on the site since 2002.
By putting the site into perspective on a larger scale, and by focusing on a number of features, the aim is to discover the unprecedented character of this place of hospitality.

In partnership with the Service Archéologique Municipal.

This photography festival covering the whole of the Hauts-de-France region returns this year with some forty exhibitions in an area stretching from Berck-sur-Mer, Amiens, Beauvais, Clermont-de-l?Oise to Noyon.

The theme of this 22nd edition is Habiter, in keeping with the artistic and cultural program surrounding the festivities surrounding the 800th anniversary of Beauvais Cathedral. In Beauvais and the surrounding area, over twenty photography exhibitions will explore architecture and heritage through the eyes of photographers. But also what it means to inhabit a territory, a city, questioning the intimate notion of ?home?, habitat and what it means in a political and sociological context.

Participatory performance Joanne Leighton ? associate artist – WLDN

Every day for 1 year from Saturday October 4 (one hour at sunrise and sunset)

Become actors in an exceptional artistic performance as you watch over Beauvais from the top of the Théâtre. We invite you to take part in a poetic gesture: for one year, day for day, two people will watch over Beauvais for one hour at sunrise and one hour at sunset.

In other words, 730 people will come and go over the course of the year, since each person can only stand vigil once. Watching in this way means reconnecting with light and the passing of the seasons. In a world increasingly invaded by the digital and the virtual, come and experience the clouds, the wind, the stars, the light filtering through cumulus clouds and nimbus clouds, and watch as darkness gradually engulfs the world, or, on the contrary, as day breaks and the dawn brightens. In a shelter specially designed by scenographer and designer Benjamin Tovo, you’ll be installed in the dome of the Théâtre, watching the urban landscape of Beauvais pulsate to the rhythm of the seasons, and for an hour you’ll be in a dialogue with yourself, suspended in time and space, in a parenthesis, a bubble iridescent with your daydreams, your mental landscape. Watching means entering into a secret, gentle relationship with the human beings who are busy below you, preparing for the slowing of the coming night, or, on the contrary, entering into the heat of the day.

Staying awake means reconnecting, for the space of an hour, with the ancestral ability of human beings to come together to write a story that goes beyond their narrow finiteness. For the space of an hour, keeping watch means becoming an actor in a poetic performance that will go down in the young history of theater as an act of hope and rebirth. We dedicate this edition of Les Veilleurs in Beauvais to Guy d?Hardivillers, who was informed of this initiative, supported it with all his passion and would undoubtedly have been the first Veilleurs.

INFORMATION & REGISTRATION
on the Beauvais Watchmen website from September 1.
We are looking for 730 participants to watch over the city of Beauvais.

INAUGURATION
saturday, October 4 at 5pm during an artistic and convivial event