If you’re a museum buff like me, you might know that there are over 55,000 museums scattered across the world in virtually every country. If you’re also a museum buff like me, you’ve considered taking vacations to cities just to stroll through the exhibition halls of the top museums in the world. Let me tell you a little bit about the 12 top museums in the world and what you can find there.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City holds quite a few superlatives: most-visited art museum in the United States, largest art museum in the United States by volume, and the USA’s largest art museum in square footage (over 600,000). Over two million artworks are housed here, ranging from such important paintings as Still Life with a Bottle of Rum by Pablo Picasso to Self-Portrait with Straw Hat by Vincent Van Gogh, Boating by Édouard Manet, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, and Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent. Art, artifacts, and architecture intersect throughout the Met’s 17 curatorial departments, worldwide in scope and covering a span of 3,000 years to the present day. You can make the Met the shining star in your New York City getaway by clicking here and choosing one of our great vacation packages.
The Musée du Louvre is the gold standard to which all other museums are compared. Founded in 1793, the permanent collection of over 400,000 items is divided amongst eight curatorial departments, and the art found here is very diverse. You can see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa here, and also Egyptian antiquities such as the Great Sphinx of Tanis; an ancient basalt column from Babylon on which the Code of Hammurabi is inscribed; Greek and Roman sculptures; and exhibits featuring rooms decorated in the 19th-century style of Napoleon III. The iconic glass pyramid outside the main entrance is perhaps the most famous brainchild of renowned Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. If you want to go to the Louvre, you better move! Go to our Paris page now and select one of our exciting European holidays that includes the City of Lights.
The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is housed inside the Winter Palace, the home of the Russian czars until the 1917 revolution. Empress Catherine the Great founded this museum, and over the span of 250 years it has become the second-largest art museum in the world, with over three million items spread out across 12 curatorial departments. It is noted for such paintings as Penitent Magdalene by Titian; The Lute Player by Caravaggio; Danaë by Rembrandt; Woman in Blue by Gainsborough; Woman in the Garden by Monet; and Francisco Goya’s Portrait of Antonia Zarate, the only Goya work owned by a Russian art museum. The Winter Palace and four adjoining buildings are open for tours, so what are you waiting for? The most opulent Russian cultural experience can be yours if you visit our St. Petersburg page and select one of our vacation packages!
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The British Museum, located in Bloomsbury, London, is perhaps the largest collection dedicated to history, art, and culture in the entire world. Over 8 million items are housed here. The British Museum is home to such iconic art and artifacts as the Rosetta Stone, the Hoa Hakananai’a moai of Easter Island, the woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai, the Sumerian Standard of Ur mosaic, Buddhist and Hinduist statues, and the Elgin Marbles sculptures, among many others. The nucleus of The British Museum is the Great Court (pictured), famous for its blue tessellated glass roof. Did you know that the Great Court is the largest indoor square in Europe? You won’t be able to see the massive permanent collection of The British Museum in one day, so be sure to add extra days to your next London vacation, brought to you by Tripmasters!
The Smithsonian Museums are some of the most interesting and exciting sights in our nation’s capital. Eleven of the Smithsonian’s 20 museums are located on the National Mall, including the National Museum of Natural History (pictured), the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Hirshhorn Art Museum. Further afield, you will find additional museums in Washington such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Zoo. You can lose entire days strolling through these museums, with their thousands of exhibition rooms and over 137 million objects. Select one of our Washington, D.C. vacation packages and experience the magic of the Smithsonian — it’s just that easy!
The Museo Nacional de Antropología, one of the most popular sights in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park, dates from 1790 when the museum was called the Cabinet of Curiosities of Mexico’s Natural History. The 600,000-item collection, housed in a building dating from 1964, is the world’s most extensive collection of art and artifacts related to the civilizations of Mexico which lived here before the 1519-21 Spanish conquest. Some of the more notable pieces in the anthropology museum’s pre-Columbian collection include a statue of Xochipilli, the Aztec god of art, and the authentic Stone of the Sun from Tenochtitlan’s Templo Mayor, better known as the Aztec calendar stone. If you want to experience Mexico’s beautiful history through its art and artifacts, and you know you do, visit our Mexico City page and choose one of our vacation packages.
The Rijksmuseum is the largest museum in the Netherlands, and is devoted to both art and history. Out of 1 million objects in the permanent collection, 8,000 are on display in the museum. The Rijksmuseum is well-known for exhibiting one of the world’s largest concentrations of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, and the famed Gallery of Honour is where many key paintings from Rembrandt (such as The Night Watch), Johannes Vermeer (The Milkmaid), Frans Hals (The Meagre Company), and Jan Steen (The Feast of Saint Nicholas) are exhibited. George Hendrik Breitner’s Girl in a White Kimono is one of the notable pieces of art on display in the Asian Pavilion. Fall in love with Dutch art and history in Amsterdam. Book your Amsterdam getaway with Tripmasters today and very soon you could be the one exploring Museum Square!
The Museo Nacional del Prado in the heart of Madrid is the largest art museum in Spain and one of the world’s leading art museums when it comes to European art, with most items dating from the Medieval era to the present. Founded in 1819 with just 311 paintings, now the museum’s collection includes over 22,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawings. It is notable for its large Spanish art collection, including the largest collection of works by Francisco Goya in the world. Other notable works in this museum include Portrait of a Cardinal by Raphael, Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer, numerous works by Peter Paul Rubens, and one of the most notable paintings of the Spanish Golden Age, Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. Visit our Madrid page, select a vacation package, and get ready to enjoy arts and culture in the heart of Spain.
The Vatican Museums‘ collection of 70,000 items started with just one marble sculpture, Laocoön and His Sons, which dates from the first century CE and was procured by Pope Julius II in 1506. Today the Vatican art and sculpture museums are well-known for their collections of Roman-era sculptures as well as Renaissance art. Legends such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Perugino, and Veronese are all represented in the Vatican Museums, as are works of art such as the Stefanischi Triptych by Giotto, Marsuppini Coronation by Filippo Lippi, and Sobieski at Vienna by the father of Polish art, Jan Matejko. (And who can forget the Sistine Chapel?) When in Rome, do as the travelers do and visit the Vatican and its art museums. Tripmasters can assist you in booking your Roman holiday.
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The Uffizi Gallery, located in the historic center of Florence, is Italy’s largest and most prestigious art museum. Dating from the late 16th century when it was the private collection of the House of Medici, the collection originally comprised just sculptures and quickly grew to include priceless paintings. These paintings, dating from the 13th to 18th centuries, include many of the jewels of the Italian Renaissance, with nearly every legendary artist well-represented. Noteworthy paintings include The Holy Family by Michelangelo, Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano, Venus of Urbino by Titian, and The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (pictured). You can experience the historic ambiance of central Florence; click here and choose your favorite vacation package.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is noteworthy for having perhaps the largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities and artifacts in the world and does lay claim to having the largest collection of Pharaonic artifacts. The first floor of the museum (pictured) displays statues, sarcophagi, and other antiquities from Ancient Egypt and the New Kingdom, so antiquities older than 1000 BCE. The last two dynasties of Egypt are the focus of the second floor, and the best-known items in the collection are located here, such as the Gold Mask of Tutankhamun, Tutankhamun’s throne, and statues of pharaohs such as Amenhotep III and Hatshepsut. (Did I mention there are also quite a few mummified royals in the collection?) The best way to learn more about Egypt — yesterday and today — is to book a Tripmasters vacation to Cairo!
The National Palace Museum in Taipei might be the youngest museum on this list. Since 1925, the museum has amassed over 700,000 items in its collection of Chinese art from antiquity to the present. Some of these items are among the most beautiful ever created in China, and many were personal pieces from the Imperial collection. 3,000 pieces of art and history are on permanent display, with some of the most notable including Man Herding Horses (12th century), The Portrait of Kublai Khan by Liu Guandao, and the exceedingly rare Ru ware pottery that was made for the Song Imperial court in the late 11th century. Chinese art, history, and more await you on your future Taipei arts and culture getaway with Tripmasters. (Pictured: Zhishan Garden on the museum property was designed faithfully in the style of the Song and Ming dynasties.)
Did you get your museum fix from this blog post? If not, check out our blog post about the world’s top children’s museums, and after that, head over to Tripmasters.com where you can look at our exciting vacation destinations in over 120 countries and territories throughout the world.
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