Plans to install a museum in the Palais des Papes extend back to the nineteenth century. Whether it was to house municipal collections, like those of the Musée Calvet and the library (C.1860), to initiate, a " Pantheon of Provence " as Frédéric Mistral pledged (c.1895), or to create an historical museum, no project was confirmed until the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Musée du Vieil Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin opened in December 1924. The creation of this history museum reflected a contemporary desire to make the monument (only accessible to visitors since 1906) a place of study and diffusion of knowledge. " Our time-honored monument has become a perpetual temple dedicated to our greatest memories. ". This locution, uttered by Dr. Colombe, Conservator of the Palais from 1919-47, shows the extend to which the Musée du Vieil Avignon was conceived to commemorate the vast edifice and the Avignonnais papacy.

The task turned out to be difficult. All that had comprised the apostolic palace's magnificience in the fourtheenth century, and the afflent days of the vice-legation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had irrevocably disappeared. The real beginning of the museum can be attributed to Ange Chambon's donation to the city of Avignon of 450 litographs, drawings and paintings.

This was added to a collection of casts from the Musée Médiéval de la Région du Midi. The purpose of this project (dating from 1911-12) was to create a museum of comparative sculpture. It was to be comparate to the Trocadéro in Paris, but dedicated only to objects from southern France. The third main element of the museum derives from archeological digs and the countless restorations effected in the building itself, a process that continues. These remain the primary components of the museum. They have been on view in the " private " apartments since the reorganization of 1989.

Visit begin in the Grande Trésorerie, accessed by the Cour d'Honneur. These rooms used to be occupied by the financial administrators of the Apostolic Chambers.

Today they indroduce the Avignon popes and present a collection of fourteenth-centuries tiles. The tiles are decorated with an extraordinary variety of motifs (plans, animals, heraldy, geometry). These tiles of the " green and brown " style covered a large portion of the floors of the palace, as well as cardinal's and count's palace floors. Appreciation for this local style (produced in Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, in Uzès region) led to its being used for tableware such as pitchers, jugs and cups.

In the lower part of the same hall are display cases containing objects discovered in archeological digs, notably those of the vaults of the nearby Trésor Bas. These vaults, which were used in the fourteenth century to store precious objects, titles and certificates, have delivered up lead bulls seals, fragments of stained glass, and even figurines in bone that probably decorated storage boxes. A collection of stone-working tools, painted-ceilling pieces, sculptures, and a series of tableaux representing Pont Saint-Bénézet finish of the room's exhibits. There is also a comprehensive interactive program on the history of the Palais des Papes.

The Salle de Jésus is accessible by a small staircase. Here paintings, engravings and maps present various aspects of seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries Avignon. There are several exhibition panels that describe the vice-legates who governed Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, their famous Swiss Guard, as well as their temporary allegiances to France.

Figures closely associated with the city, such as the penitent brotherhoods and popular imagery, are also represented. Gold and silver coins from the pontificals period are exhibited in the small hall next to the papal vestry.

The visit continues in the direction of the Grande Chapelle. In the north sacristy, many casts are presented evoking the history of the papacy through great and famous personages who were involved with it, such as Catherine of Siena, King Charles and Jeanne de Bourbon. The famous Bearing of the Cross by Laurana is also on view there, as are, a few steps away in the cardinals'vestry, casts of recumbent statues and Avignonnais Pope'tombs. The originals of these casts are located throughout France and Italy.