In 1823, on the suggestion of the architect Virebent, the city council took the decision to pierce the walls separating the sacristy, the Notre-Dame de Pitié chapel and the chapter house to make one large unity of space. To increase the light in the nave and to give it a face-lift, all the upper windows of the north flank and the large rose window on the west facade were demolished and replaced by transparent glass. The restoration work carried out in the salle des Antiques, put to use the fruit of this destruction left behind in the rubble and foundations, as revealed in the excavations in 1976-1977. In 1831, the city council assigned the creation of the " Temple des Arts" to the architect Vitry. It was a vast neo-classical construction, heavily decorated and with a full plaster arch, mounted on pillars and a frame inside the church. The high windows of the south flank were thus broken rather arbitrarily. Visiting the work-site in 1832, the count of Montalembert labelled Toulouse as "home of vandalism". Urbain Vitry removed the flagstones and replaced them with a raised floor. From the gothic vault, he suspended a full plaster barrel-vault, described as the "Philibert de l'Orme vault", in order to disguise the religious character of the building. The large cloister was renovated by Alexandre Du Mège to house the main part of the medieval collection, which he had tirelessly saved from the frequent destruction of religious buildings in Toulouse and the surrounding region. This presentation can still be seen in the drawings of Adrien Dauzats in Les Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France by Taylor and Nodier (1835). The drawings show the Venus gallery to the north, the emperors' gallery to the west, the tombs gallery to the south and the Middle Ages to the east. Their framework sometimes had a ceiling, the floor was tiled in white marble and the accessories were covered with red marble. All in all, it bears a striking resemblance to the museum of French monuments designed by Alexander Lenoir! Among the most regrettable transformations, we must mention the arbitrary demolition of the refectory due to a project that pierced two large straight roads at right angles, in front of the museum. This project aroused vehement opposition and became the subject of a political battle between the republicans, defenders of old monuments, and the conservatives who opted for the destruction in 1868, in spite of the conclusions of the inspector of the Monuments historiques who declared the building a listed monument. Some rare earlier documents (engraving by Séguenot, drawing by Mazzoli) show a vast monument with seven brick bays, parallel to the west wing of the cloister and covered by a flat ceiling. Six large diaphragm arches cascade onto sculpted consoles supported the ceilings. Between the buttresses, are gemeled windows mounted on a trefoil design. The drawing also shows the monks' dormitory on the upper floor. In 1873, the mayor of Toulouse asked Viollet-Le-Duc to complete the museum and to restore the existing buildings. The building plan, which sets the monument along the rue d'Alsace subsists and this was partially completed by the architect, Denis Darcy. The construction of this wing was often interrupted and went on for nearly thirty years. In 1895, the art school was transferred to the old tobacco workshops on the quai de la Daurade, and the south wing of the convent was demolished to make way for a garden. In 1901, the new museum was completed.