La Citadelle – Centre d’art & Musée
La Citadelle is a fortress built in the 16th century. It became an arts and cultural centre in 1981, after being demilitarised in 1967 and listed as a Historic Monument in 1968. It brings together a contemporary art centre and modern art collections.
The museum trail is currently closed for renovation works and the restoration of the collections. The contemporary art centre remains open, hosting artist residencies and exhibitions. La Citadelle presents itself as an open-air art space, offering invited contemporary artists an unusual playground spanning more than three hectares.
La Citadelle is a fortress built in the 16th century. It became an arts and cultural centre in 1981, after being demilitarised in 1967 and listed as a Historic Monument in 1968. It brings together a contemporary art centre and modern art collections.
The museum trail is currently closed for renovation works and the restoration of the collections. The contemporary art centre remains open, hosting artist residencies and exhibitions. La Citadelle presents itself as an open-air art space, offering invited contemporary artists an unusual playground spanning more than three hectares.
Programme
Too Old to Die Young – La Station Celebrates Its Thirty Years
What remains when you don’t die young?
The mythification of a youth cut down in its prime is deeply embedded in our society. That Kurt left us too soon—we can all agree on that. One would have liked to hear what his raspy voice might have sounded like at the dawn of his sixties, singing Something in the Way in a world unbalanced on almost every level. Too Old to Die Young.
At once, the phrase overturns expectations and a generational tension emerges: an underground slogan riding on a post-youth aesthetic. In a culture of survival rather than heroism—echoing a Camus-like stance where the absurdity of insisting on staying in this life becomes a militant act—the idea of the collective, and what La Station represents, endures. With humour and cynicism as ramparts, it adopts a stance both half-hallucinated and half-disenchanted in order to move forward, despite everything.
La Station, a mythical site of contemporary creation in the cultural landscape of the French Riviera, is a unique space founded in 1996—an inventive, essential and deeply human artist-run space, celebrating a joyfully ambiguous artistic practice somewhere between ego and the collective. La Citadelle – Centre d’art & Musée is pleased to invite fourteen artists to celebrate the thirty years of La Station through this exhibition.
Arne Quinze and Joana Vasconcelos - The Absurd and the Dream
The Belgian sculptor Arne Quinze invites Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos to join him in creating an extraordinary body of work, exploring the poetic, the surreal and the unexpected.
In the spirit of Jean Cocteau — whose legacy is deeply rooted in Villefranche-sur-Mer — the exhibition encourages visitors to rediscover surrealism and dreamlike thinking as essential lenses through which to reflect on the growing distance between contemporary culture and nature. A loss and a form of alienation that Quinze views as profoundly harmful.
Spreading throughout the Citadel, the exhibition unfolds through monumental outdoor installations alongside more intimate indoor environments. It offers Quinze and Vasconcelos a unique space for expression, allowing them to shape a singular and immersive narrative.
Access
La Citadelle – Centre d’art & Musée
Place Emmanuel Philibert
06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer
04 93 76 33 27
lacitadellevsm.fr
Open daily from 10am to 5pm, except public holidays.
Free admission.
Locate other art venues in the vicinity on the map.
