32 World’s greatest art museums

Florence’s other big-name art museum (with the Uffizi) 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 1504 4m-high statue of David.

Moved here in 1873 from Piazza della Signoria, the iconic sculpture appears quite different in the flesh: the head and hands are larger than expected (a trick of perspective; originally the statue was placed higher up).

Walk around the back to see David’s sling, a tree stump – and those famous buttocks.

The Alte Nationalgalerie, one of the three internationally-renowned galleries on Museum Island, showcases one of the world’s largest collections of 19th-century sculpture and paintings, with additional collections of neoclassical, Romantic, Impressionist and early Modernist artwork.

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, Magrite and Gaugin.

Stunningly designed by Richard Meir, this marble-clad modernist complex tucked into the 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.

Strolling through the 110 acres of galleries, gardens and modern buildings perched overlooking the LA sprawl is a must for any visiting art fan.

This is the building that transformed a city and started an architectural revolution. Ever since Frank Gehry’s swirling, titanium-clad Guggenheim opened in 1997, it has been acclaimed as the greatest building of our time, and its construction supplied the spark for the remarkable rebirth of old industrial Bilbao.

The museum is home to part of the enormous Guggenheim collection of contemporary art, and every year its blockbuster special exhibitions draw art lovers from around the world. It may also be the only museum anywhere with a Michelin-starred restaurant, Nerua, serving haute cuisine. There is also a less formal bistro with prix fixe menus and an outdoor terrace.

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

Some of the collections focus on Russian history and culture, others on wider European art – recent and forthcoming exhibitions have included masterpiece Impressionist paintings. Usually, two blockbuster exhibitions take place each year.

It may seem odd that Amsterdam is home to such fine Russian art, but Amsterdam has a special relationship with Russia – Peter the Great once lived in the city, and it inspired him to build St Petersburg. He founded the original Hermitage Museum using exhibits collected while in Amsterdam.

The Western US’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 and Japanese sculptures dating from 3000 BC to paintings by Rubens, Cezanne and Degas.

The museum also has a strong contemporary art offering, with works by Lichtenstein, Pollock and Jasper Johns. There’s also a space for lectures, performances and other events.

The world’s most visited museum, the Louvre dates back to the 13th century, and was the primary residence of the French Royal family until Louis XVI moved the household to the Palais of Versailles in 1682. It opened as a museum in 1793 with 537 paintings – mainly from the Royal collection; today it houses 35,000 works of art and 380,000 objects.

The building is almost as much of an attraction as the exhibits; explore the grand galleries with ornately painted ceilings, opulent stairways and remnants of a medieval Parisian palace. Let yourself wander – and wonder – your way through the museum’s beautifully laid out, labyrinthine halls and discover world-class Italian Renaissance and French Neoclassical and Romantic painting, antique sculpture, treasures from Ancient Egypt and Assyria, or medieval gold and silverwares.

The sheer wealth of exhibits in the Louvre can be intimidating on the one hand; on the other, it means there’s always something fascinating to discover.

One of the largest art museums in the world, this treasure house hoards more than two million artworks, artefacts and decorative arts spanning thousands of years of human civilisation.

It’s focus is historical and classical art – Ancient Egyptian, Islamic, Asian, Oceanic, Greek and Roman amongst others – as well as a fine collection of contemporary art that includes Picasso, Matisse, Miro, and Balthus.

The collections, all beautifully displayed, are so vast you would need a week to see them all.

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

The collection highlights include works from the Dutch Golden Age, 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.

Since its founding in 1929, MoMa – as it is affectionately known – has dedicated itself to being the foremost museum for contemporary art, namely late 19th- and 20th-century art.

The collection is presented chronologically, taking you on an artistic journey through Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Impressionism, and Pop Art, with more than a few masterpieces along the way. There are also galleries for photographers, drawings, film and even a sculpture garden.

It’s great for families too, with special kids audio guides on the website to the masterpieces and highlights.

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.

Step out of the bustle of Trafalgar Square into the palatial building to take a tour of the classics, from the Italian Renaissance to the French Impressionists.

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.

The Centre Pompidou revolutionised both Paris and art museums when it opened in 1976 – and this multi-coloured glass and steel structure, designed by ‘starchitects’ Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, is still one of the city’s most exciting modern buildings.

Inside, the fabulous Musée National d’Art Moderne – Europe’s largest collection of modern and contemporary art – takes you from Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky, via Pop Art and Arte Povera, to the latest installation and video art. The multidisciplinary spirit encompasses exhibitions, a cinema, performing arts space, library, bookshop, design shop and a trendy restaurant, Forest.

The celebrated ride up the escalators is still unmissable, providing one of the best views in Paris as the city unfolds before you.

Founded in 1856 as a visual hall of fame for the country’s great and good, today the National Portrait Gallery 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.

If you’re in London in summer, look out for the gallery’s prestigious BP Portrait Award; otherwise, the rotating exhibitions of portrait photography cover lively themes such as rock’n’roll, fashion and dance.

This brilliantly converted Belle Epoque train station is now a temple to art from 1848 to 1914, and it’s looking better than ever after a revamp for the museum’s 25th anniversary.

Downstairs, sculptures sit where trains once pulled in, and rooms pit Symbolists against Realists. On the top floor, the crowd-pulling Impressionists and Post-Impressionists include Monet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. The mezzanine levels feature Rodin sculptures, early photography and superb Art Nouveau decorative arts. At any one time, around 3,000 artworks are on display. Check out their Wikipedia page for a list of 24 selected collection highlights.

One of the finest museums in the world, the Prado was originally meant to be a museum of natural science. However, by the time it was completed in 1819, its purpose had shifted to that of a grand art exhibition space. Today, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, it is the single best collection of Spanish art and arguably the world’s finest collection of European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th century.

Its vast galleries are packed with household-name masterpieces and heavyweight artists – the stars of the show being Velazquez, El Greco and Goya. The hugely impressive permanent collection comprises around 8,000+ drawings, 7,600+ paintings, 4,800+ prints, and 1,000+ sculptures – though at any one time, only 1,300 works are displayed in the main building due to capacity constraints.

There are usually also several world-class temporary exhibitions running alongside the permanent collection.

Madrid’s world-class modern art museum, housed in a vast 18th-century former hospital with an extension by Jean Nouvel, has a collection encompassing art from the beginning of the 20th century onwards. The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art, and is home to outstanding collections of Spain’s two greatest 20th-century masters, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.

Works by other Spanish artists such as Miro, Chillida and Tapies sit alongside international names such as Francis Bacon, Donald Judd and Gerhard Richter, and there are always a few worthwhile temporary exhibitions. No wonder it ranks 6th on the list of the world’s most visited art museums.

One of the world’s great art collections, the Rijksmuseum is 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 – including an Asia Pavilion – tracing 800 years of Dutch art and culture.

The Rijksmuseum is also one of the world’s oldest state museums. It first opened in 1800 before moving in 1885 to its current location in a grand neo-Renaissance building, designed by Pierre Cuypers.

With seven floors and more than 33,000 works of modern and contemporary art, including design, photography, and media arts, the SF MoMA boasts one of the largest holdings of 20th- and 21st-century works on the planet.

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. Also look out for artwork by abstract painter Mark Rothko, and master of 20th Century Realism, Edward Hopper, as well as the 30-foot-tall Living Wall made up of over 19,000 plants.

The museum’s store features everything from sunburst clocks to Warhol ‘Soup Can’ skateboards, and a gourmet cafe serves up tasty seasonal eats.

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 Goh. 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 is home to one of the world’s finest collections of modern and contemporary art. Permanent collections include works by world-renowned artists such as Calder, Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, and van Gogh. Special exhibitions showcase important artists from the 19th century through the present.

The museum building, too, is a masterpiece. Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic, curvaceous design – completed in 1959 – is an architectural stunner, both outside and inside, where artworks are displayed on a walkway that spirals up in a great rotunda.

The second-largest art museum in the world, a visit to the State Hermitage is the ultimate must-do in St. Petersburg – a jaw-dropping, overwhelming exploration of human history, spread across six historic buildings on the shores of the Neva river.

Whatever your interest – Egyptian antiquities, French Renaissance Art, Russian military history – it is represented here, on a scale few other museums in the world can match.

Founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great as a court museum, the original Hermitage was built as a private gallery for the Empress’ vast art collection, adjoining the Winter Palace. Eighty years later, the Hermitage was reconstructed under Nicolas I and opened to the public in 1852. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the imperial collections became public property.

Locals (misleadingly) refer to the Hermitage as the ‘Winter Palace’, but this is just one in the complex of five buildings, which display more than three million items – still a fraction of the Hermitage’s full collection. One ticket gives you access to all five buildings, each of which houses very different parts of the collection.

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 a pity – the Tate Britain houses an impressive collection of classical and modern British art that’s second only to the National Gallery.

Come here to see evocative landscapes and striking portraits by British greats such as Gainsborough, Freud, Bacon and Constable – who gets an entire room to himself – as well as Turner, whose works number into the thousands.

The gallery is best known for its works by deceased painters, but the always-controversial annual Turner Prize (October to January) is an exhibition of the best contemporary British art of that year – and a highlight of the London art calendar.

Like 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 and walking around its inventive exhibition spaces.

From Damien Hirst to Monet, Rothko to Miro, Lichtenstein to Warhol, the treasures in this 1940s industrial construction are legendary. The main galleries feature a rotating selection of the 60,000-piece permanent collection.

But the big buzz is usually about its colossal Turbine Hall, which hosts temporary, site-specific installations from big names like Louise de Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Bruce Nauman.

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. One of the world’s largest private collections, this treasure trove of nearly a thousand paintings is housed in a grand 18th-century neoclassical palace

Major highlights include paintings by Ghirlandaio, Durer, Titian, Raphael, Degas and Kandinsky. There’s usually at least one temporary exhibition on, too, and a lovely terrace bar on the rooftop.

Containing some 5,400 works, the Uffizi’s collection spans art history from ancient Greece through to 18th-century Venetian painting. But most of all, it is known as the world’s largest and most important collection of Renaissance and Mannerist art.

You could spend all day wandering the galleries, but the best bet is to pick out the works you want to see beforehand and head straight for those. The website has helpfully selected its must-see masterpieces and provided some useful background information on each – worth reading before you go.

Follow the story of Van Gogh’s life through two hundred works of art, displayed chronologically to show the troubled artist’s development. The exhibition begins with gloomy Dutch scenes, before proceeding to classic, optimistic works painted in Arles (such as Sunflowers and The Bedroom).

The exhibition ends with the foreboding landscapes around Auvers-sur-Oise, painted just before his suicide. The top floor holds an extensive collection of art by other leading 19th-century painters, and a wing at the rear showcases major exhibitions.

This complex of museums, in the home of the Catholic Church, are mind-bogglingly opulent. They’re home to one of the greatest hoards of treasure, antiquities and art anywhere.

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

A dramatic architectural conversion of historic grain silos was done by British ‘starchitect’ Thomas Heatherwick in 2017, creating a remarkable home for Africa’s leading collection of artworks from Africa and its diaspora.

Alongside permanent galleries, the Museum runs an exciting schedule of special exhibitions, featuring African artists exploring historic and contemporary themes across mixed media.

From the upper levels you’ll also enjoy panoramic views of the city and Table Mountain.