Avignon Old Town (Part 2)

Following on from a couple of days ago, a selection of some of the notable 18th and 19th century buildings in the old town. We begin with the Hotel de Ville and l'Opera (misleadingly renamed the Theatre; although opera en Francais does not have quite the same meaning as in English, "theatre" is not really a synonym); move on to what is now the Galerie Ducastel but was originally the Theatre Comedie, founded in 1660 and taking its present form in 1825, home to the opera bouffant tradition for many years; and then drop by two eighteenth century mansions which have been converted into museums -- the Musee Vouland, which houses a display of pre-revolutionary furniture and asociated objets collected by the 1920s industrialist Louis Vouland; and (in the very magnificent former Hotel de Villeneuve-Martignan) the Musee Calvet, based on but expanded from the collection of the 18th century's Dr Esprit Calvet: an engaging collection of paintings and portraits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, which includes a number of singletons from famous Northern European artists such as Brueghel and Vlaminck as well as many pieces from less well-known French artists such as Nicolas Mignard, Horace Vernet and Jean Louis David plus any number of Provencal artists whose local fame did not survive their demise. But such is the way with art of all kinds....