Inheritance

The cellars and the undergrounds
the Bélien Mount on which the old castle of Pontoise was built is a limestone spur. The extraction of material necessary to the construction left many cellars from XIIth to XVth century.

The Carmille Pissarro museum
Installed in a middle-class house which dominates the valley of Oise and the old city, over the site of the old royal castle, is the museum of Camille.
Pissarro pays homage to the Master who worked in Pontoise between 1866 and 1883, and was at the origin of the stays in Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise of Cézanne, Gauguin, and Vincent Van Gogh. This museum constituted in about twenty years a collection articulated around a beautiful whole of original strong water of Camille Pissarro, but also of the works of numerous artists who worked in the second part of the XIXth century between Pontoise and Isle-Adam. Thus, the visitor will discover to his will the fixings of works of Béliard, Boggio, Caillebotte, Béliard, Boggio, Caillebotte, Cézanne, Daubigny, baumier, Goeneutte, Guillaumin, Hayet, Jimenez, Linet, Piette, Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Signac or Thornley.
Camille Pissarro

The Tavet-Delacour museum
Installed in a beautiful private mansion of the end of XVth century, formerly a dwelling of the Big Priest of Pontoise, the Tavet-Delacour Museum preserves the historical collections of the city.
Its rich collections of the XXth century were primarily made up around the Freundlich donation (I 968). The museum presents exhibitions devoted to the XXth century, with the historical collections, and with those which concern the programming of the Pissarro museum.
To note, this programming can temporarily modify the presentation of the permanent collections.

Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich (1878-1943), one of the Masters of the birth of the Modern art, was, since 19 11, one of the precursors of the abstraction. Victim of Nazism, it knew the unhappy privilege to see its works appearing in the exhibition of Die Entartete Kunst (degenerated Art), and therefore destroyed in great number since 1937. Deportee, he had to disappear at the camp of Lublin Maïdanek in March 1943. The works of the collections of the museum of Pontoise constitute the preserved set of its work that is the most important in the world.

The convent of Cordeliers
The Franciscan reform, in love of poverty, made its appearance in Pontoise in the shape of a convent of Cordeliers, initially installed out of the walls, then besides the door of Ennery, and finally rebuilt in the heart of the city. It is the current Town hall.

The carmelite monastery
The most former Carmelite friar) of France in activity (founded in 1605): the superb buildings of the beginning of XVIIth are intact. One finds in the Carmelite friar) a testimony of the hydraulic genius of the Middle Ages, the old course of Viosne deviated to feed out of water a part of the city center.

The church of Notre-dame
In 1177, a vault is initially built for the inhabitants of "the Fulling mill", that is a popular suburb located in the outside of the walls of the city. From 1250 to 1299, a larger building is built. It will be partly destroyed during the One hundred Year old War, restored under the reign of Charles VII, during whom it becomes a basilica. Entirely demolished during the wars of religion, it is a church much more modest which is finally devoted in 1599. .
One can still see there the Tomb of Saint-Gauthier (XIIth-XIIth century).

The Saint-Maclou cathedral
Superb monument of composite style, with the bedside and transept in primitive Gothic (XIIth century), with the frontage in blazing Gothic (Xvth c.), and with the sides of a Renaissance style (XVI th c.), it dominates the old center of Pontoise.
It was devoted in 1966.