Tournai : some musea, culinary stops and closing off a great weekend (part 2)

In our weekend in Tournai / Doornik, we also visited some of the handful musea in the small city center. That came in handy to fill some more time as we couldn't walk outside for 2 days in the city either.


I really wanted to hop into the TAMAT (musée de tapisserie) as the Tournai tapestry has been such a great part of its history.  While other Flemish medieval cities were famous for its Flemish cloth and became rich through the international trade, Tournai specialised in tapestry.  The Burgundian dukes ordered quite some tapestry to decorate their palaces. 

We first explored already some big pieces in the staircase of the city hall. 

TAMAT is a small museum that hosts about 8 historic tapestries, together with a series of newer tapisteries that the local art academy try to revive the craft and interest. 

The old tapestries must have an incredible value but I found it hard to decipher the medieval iconography even though each tapestry had a plastified keycard explaining the scene and the symbolic or historic figures.   It was interesting to try to comprehend the scene depicted but it couldn't really touch me very much. 

In a way I enjoyed the more modern tapestries more with a less loaden iconography. They seemed much more accessible. 

On the top floors there were expositions exploring different types of use of textile, different materials or the re-use of materials. 

A cadilac tapestry

We also visited the Beaux Arts museum, which is housed in a Victor Horta building.  Unfortunately that building seems very unfit to house much delicate art so most halls have their glass ceiling covered to protect the paintings from the direct sunlight, which is a bit of a shame.  
The exposition also made if bluntly explicitely clear that some art is damaged because of the lack of adequate storage room etc but there seems to be plans to drastically renew and partially rebuild the museum. Wow, so much renovation need (and plans?) in Tournai everywhere. 

But the museum does boast some excellent beautiful art. I liked some Flemish luminism by Theodore Verstraete and realism from the turn of the 20th century most but they are most proud of their Manet, Monet and Seurat. 

Manet - L'argenteuil 

Monet - La pointe du cap Martin

Seurat - La grève du bas butin à Honfleur

one of the Ensor paintings...the other ones were very early oeuvre with very dark images

I loved this cute little boy asleep: Jules Bastien-Lepage - Le Petit Colporteur endormi

In this last very filled room you almost stumble by coincidence on a Rogier van der Weyden or a Pieter Breughel.  A pity they can't put forward some artwork more. 

Taking a break or city trip is also much about eating out and enjoying horeca. 
We had had a long debate whether to book a hotel room or an appartment and the availability of a breakfast buffet had been a huge differentiator why we wanted to opt for a hotel first . So we took a lot of time searching for an option to eat out for breakfast.  We succeeded on Saturday but didn't find new /other options that were open on Sunday. We even had to search for a while to find a bakery open that morning to get out some fresh pastries to eat in the appartment. 

But that first breakfast at Baba , located on the market square was top.   The Maroccan little restaurant  serves a delicious Maroccan breakfast dish with green tea in a cute setting.  It's also open for lunch. 

In the evening we had reserved in L'Elephant blanc for a quite nice Italian meal in a basement 

We finished on the market square again where we had started on Friday evening but this time we enjoyed a tapas lunch outside