Since 1793, the Augustins museum, musée des Beaux-arts de la ville de Toulouse, seated at the historical heart of the city in a remarkable convent building characteristic of the southern gothic style, has been home to collections of paintings and sculptures dating from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. The variety and richness of the works highlight the most important movements in the history of western art. Particularly rich in sculptures, the Augustins museum owns a unique collection of romanesque sculptures and has an equally superb ensemble of masterpieces representing southern gothic sculpture as well as numerous 19th century sculptures, representative of the vitality of artistic life in Toulouse. The painting collections, on a par with the great museums of France, expanded around an initial core of paintings that consisted of works confiscated during the revolution and those sent by the state, and have been enriched ever since. Alongside the masterpieces of the French and European schools of the 16th to the 18th centuries (Perugino, Guerchin, Rubens, Van Dyck, Tournier, Jouvenet, Bourdon, etc.), the museum displays a superb 19th century collection: Hennequin, Delacroix, Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Laurens, Constant. The works are presented in the sumptuous setting of the church and the chapter houses of the old Augustins convent. They can be admired also in a wing, built at the end of the 19th century based on the drawings of the famous architect Viollet-Le-Duc. This wing is composed of a monumental staircase and vast rooms with overhead lighting.