32 World’s greatest art museums

Along with Florence’s other headline gallery, the Uffizi, the Accademia has a world-class collection of 14th- and 15th-century art, but those endless queues of people are really here to see one thing: Michelangelo’s 4m-high marble statue of David.

Other highlights include more Michelangelo sculptures and two Madonnas by Botticelli.

Set on Berlin’s famous ‘Museum Island‘, this smart colonnaded building contains one of the most impressive collections of 19th-century art in Europe.

It’s particularly focused on the Romantic and Neoclassical movements, it has paintings by Monet, Manet, Schinkel and Hildebrandt, as well as some sculptures.

Founded in 1879, the US’s second-largest art museum is the place for world-class Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Home to 300,000 works, it also regularly hosts unmissable temporary exhibitions.

Highlights include Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait and Bedroom in Arles, Monet’s Water Lillies, plus works by Cezanne, Picasso, Magritte and Gaugin.

Stunningly designed by Richard Meir, this marble-clad modernist complex tucked into California’s Santa Monica Mountains houses the late billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s impressive art collection.

Highlights on show include works by Titian and Van Gogh, illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, Louis XIV-era furniture and decorative arts.

This is the building that transformed a city and started an architectural revolution. Ever since Frank Gehry’s swirling, titanium-clad Guggenheim opened in this Basque region city in 1997, it has been acclaimed as one of the greatest buildings of our time.

Its collection of contemporary art, and annual special exhibitions, draw art lovers from around the world.

A 17th-century retirement home by the Amstel River has been converted into exhibition spaces to display exquisite treasures from the vast collections of St. Petersburg‘s State Hermitage Museum.

Two blockbuster exhibitions take place each year – some of the collections focus on Russian history and culture, others on wider European art.

West-coast USA’s pre-eminent art museum is a 20-acre compound of galleries and pavilions housing more than 100,000 works – from ancient Mayan bowls inscribed with bat heads to Japanese sculptures dating from 3,000 BC, via paintings by Rubens, Cezanne and Degas.

The recently-added Broad Contemporary Art Museum has strengthened LACMA’s contemporary art offering, too.

Admire the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and many, many more cultural treasures in the world’s most visited museum, set in a medieval palace by the Seine.

Beyond the big hitters are grand galleries of Italian Renaissance and French Neoclassical and Romantic painting, antique sculpture, and treasures from Ancient Egypt.

‘The Met’, as it’s fondly known, is one of the largest art museums in the world, hoarding more than two million artworks, artefacts and decorative arts spanning thousands of years of human civilisation.

Its focus is historical and classical art – Ancient Egyptian, Islamic, Asian, Oceanic, Greek and Roman amongst others – as well as a fine collection of contemporary paintings and sculpture.

Founded in 1870, this comprehensive museum of over 450,000 works showcases a wide variety of styles and cultures.

Collection highlights include works from the Dutch Golden Age, the French Impressionist and post-Impressionist eras, 18th- and 19th-century American art, the largest collection of Japanese art outside of Japan and the Rockefeller collection of Native American Art.

This boxy, glassy building in the heart of Midtown takes you through the contemporary art movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in a pleasingly chronological display, touching on Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Impressionism, and Pop Art.

Do not leave without marvelling at Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Matisse’s Dance, and Picasso’s Les Desmoiselles D’Avignon.

The hallowed galleries of the ‘National’ are home to one of the greatest collections of Western European paintings in the world.

There are more than 2,300 works on display here; the most famous, perhaps, is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers but also stop by to see Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus, and Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, too.

Originally a private art gallery, America’ second most popular museum showcases a history of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The permanent collection includes European and American paintings, including works by Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso, plus sculpture, photographs, and decorative arts.

The largest art gallery in Australia and indeed Oceania, the NGA holds over 170,000 works of art housed in a striking Brutalist-style building.

While relatively small on the world stage, it’s the place to go for Australian art and is home to some icons of Western art. It also holds the best collection of Aboriginal and other indigenous Oceania art.

Europe’s largest collection of modern and contemporary art showcases art history from Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky, via Pop Art and Arte Povera, to the latest installation and video art.

It’s all housed in one of the city’s most exciting modern buildings, the architecturally-compelling Centre Pompidou.

Founded in 1856 as a visual hall of fame for the country’s great and good, today this Trafalgar Square landmark is still a vital part of British culture.

The form may be traditional but the collection of 175,000 portraits range from stiff-upper-lipped royals and Victorian politicians to modern-day celebrities and Olympic heroes.

A gloriously-converted Belle Epoque train station that is now a temple to Impressionist art dating from 1848 to 1914. The exceptional collection includes works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh.

One of the finest museums in the world, Madrid’s Prado’s vast galleries are packed with masterpieces, but the stars of the show are Velazquez, El Greco and Goya.

Don’t miss The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch, as well as Velazquez’s Las Meninas.

Madrid’s world-class modern art museum, housed in a vast 18th-century former hospital with an extension by Jean Nouvel (2005), has a collection encompassing art from the beginning of the 20th century onwards.

Works by Spanish artists such as Dali, Miro, Chillida and Tapies, sit alongside international names such as Francis Bacon, Donald Judd and Gerhard Richter.

One of the world’s great art collections, the Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands’ premier museum. It’s packed with Dutch Golden Age masterpieces, showcasing the finest works of Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer alongside memorable dolls’ houses and Delftware.

A total of 8,000 exhibits are displayed in 80 rooms tracing 800 years of Dutch art and culture.

One of the top modern art museums in the USA, SFMoMA was the first West Coast museum to be entirely dedicated to 20th-century art.

The Mario Botta-designed building is a sight in itself, but inside you’ll find Picassos and Pollocks galore, as well as works by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol’s self-portraits, and photography by Ansel Adams.

Founded in 1947, South America’s greatest museum features a collection of over 10,000 pieces from across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

It’s the largest collection of European Art in the Southern hemisphere, including works bv Picasso, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. It’s all housed in one of the city’s most iconic buildings, an architectural stand-out designed by Lina Bo Bardi in 1968.

For the world’s greatest collection of Chinese Art, China’s premier art museum established in 1952 is a must-visit.

There are over 120,000 works spread over 11 galleries; it’s an absorbing mix of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts and many rare cultural artefacts of national importance.

New York’s Guggenheim Museum is home to one of the world’s finest collections of modern and contemporary art.

Alongside intriguing temporary shows, the permanent collection includes works by world-renowned artists such as Calder, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, and Van Gogh.

Founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, and originally built as a private gallery for the Empress’ vast art collection, today it’s an extraordinary showcase of human cultural history.

The world’s second-largest art museum exhibits everything from Egyptian antiquities, to French Renaissance Art and Russian military history across six different museum buildings.

This grand Portland stone building on the Thames, the original Tate Gallery, has lately been eclipsed by its edgier younger sibling, the Tate Modern.

This is the more classic of the two – come here to see evocative landscapes and striking portraits by British greats such as Gainsborough, Freud, Bacon and Constable, as well as Turner, whose works number into the thousands.

Like the MoMA in New York or the Pompidou Centre in Paris, London’s Tate Modern is an energetic and uniquely site-specific art space.

This former power station beside the Thames houses a permanent and rotating exhibition of contemporary art that gets London talking: from Damien Hirst to Monet, Rothko to Miro, Lichtenstein to Warhol, the treasures in this 1940s industrial construction are legion.

This outstanding art collection – accumulated by Swiss industrialist Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza – tells the story of 800 years of art history, from 13th-century Italian Gothic paintings all the way up to 20th-century Pop Art.

Highlights include paintings by Ghirlandaio, Durer, Titian, Raphael, Degas and Kandinsky.

Florence’s most visited museum was first opened in the 16th century to house the collections of the House of Medici.

Today it houses the world’s largest and most important collection of Renaissance and Mannerist art, home to 5,400 works spanning art history from ancient Greece through to 18th-century Venetian painting.

The world’s largest collection of works by post-Impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh also follows the story of his life.

Some 200 works of art by Van Gogh – including one of the four original ‘Sunflowers‘ paintings – are displayed chronologically, so you can follow the troubled artist’s development.

This complex of museums, in the home of the Catholic Church, house one of the greatest hoards of treasures, antiquities and art anywhere.

The star exhibit is the frescoed Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo’s famous ceiling – arguably the world’s greatest masterpiece – plus there are exceptional collections of Roman sculpture and Renaissance art.

Cape Town is the fine art capital of Africa, and there are few better places to discover the continent’s creative powerhouses than at the Zeitz.

Africa’s leading collection of artworks, showcasing African artists exploring historic and contemporary themes, is all housed in a dramatic architectural conversion of historic grain silo by British ‘starchitect’ Thomas Heatherwick.