Musee des Beaux-Arts de Brest. The Brest Fine Arts Museum is the main art museum in the city of Brest, in Brittany. The museum and its collections were recreated after the Second World War, the museum having been destroyed like most of the city during its bombardment by the Allied forces. With considerable effort, an admirable collection of old painting - the largest to have been assembled in France since 1945 - was able to be assembled. It offers a beautiful panorama of French and Italian painting over the centuries. Modern painting is also present, although the museum has focused primarily on the creation of a collection of ancient art that can be a witness to the past, for a city that lost almost all of its ancient heritage during the bombings. Completed in 1968, the building housing the museum is typical of functional post-war architecture in Brest. In 1812, the municipality decided to build an attic of plenty, or market hall, to reduce the price of grain and therefore that of bread. The report by architect Voyer estimates the cost of this construction at 250,000 francs. The building is built in the former garden of the Carmelite fathers, property of the hospice acquired by the city in 1820 as well as on private land, on the Place de la Halle aux Bles, now Place Sadi-Carnot. With an imposing architecture, with 40 meters side and 30 meters high, its pyramidal roof dominates the city. It was in 1828 that Admiral Dupure laid the first stone. Five years later, the September 15, 1833, the hall, entirely paved with sixteen hundred meters of covered area, is open to the public for the sale and storage of wheat. The floor is used to display fabrics and other goods. Gradually, the market hall opens to other functions. In 1842, the central nave was converted into a ballroom during the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Nemours. In August 1858, the municipality receives the emperor Napoleon III and the empress Eugenie. In 1853, the first floor housed the library with its 35,000 volumes, as well as the city archives, previously housed in the attic of the town hall. The association La Brestoise used part of the ground floor until 1940 for various sporting activities. Following, in 1866, the fire of the big theater, Place du Champ de Bataille, the village hall was repatriated to the hall. The idea of ??a museum in Brest was in the minds from the 1850s and objects were offered at that time for it at the town hall and at the Academic Society of Brest, as the gift of the watchmaker Landernean Eleouet, who sold his collection of 1,200 to 1,300 coins in 1856, collected for twenty years, for the sum of 4,000 francs. It covers all periods from the Gauls to the 19th century. In 1868, Henri Hombron, painter from Brest, author of the Catalog of the Quimper Museum in 1873 and various articles or artistic monographs, proposed to create a museum in Brest with his own funds. It obtains by deliberation of the municipality a budget for the creation of the museum. The president of the SAB, supported by the mayor Auguste Salaun-Penquer, asks the Minister of Fine Arts that the State enrich the museum. The ministerial response sent to the mayor is favorable, but the attribution of works of art can only take place during the official opening of the museum. The war of 1870 interrupted the project. After the war, Henri Hombron relaunched his museum project. He asked the municipality to grant subsidies to the fine arts section of the SAB to create an annual exhibition of paintings and drawings. The Company develops the production of works of art by awarding prizes and awards. Helped by two curators from the Louvre, who took refuge in Brest during the war of 1870, they will restore the canvases that were stored at the town hall.