42 incredible museums to visit in your lifetime
As Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA) - poised to be Africa's biggest contemporary art museum - is unveiled today, our experts reveal the most spectacular museums to see around the world.
Which museums have we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
New York
1. Museum of Modern Art
Known the world over as MoMA, the glassy Yoshio Taniguchi-designed Midtown building houses one of the most influential collections of modern art in the world. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse, Magritte, Picasso, Pollock and Warhol are all here. There is also performance art, architecture, design and a collection of 22,000 films, with frequent screenings and retrospectives.
Details:moma.org
2. Metropolitan Museum of Art
The iconic New York museum is so enormous you’ll be overwhelmed if you don’t narrow your focus. Don’t miss the Greek and Roman galleries on the first floor.
Details:metmuseum.org
3. Guggenheim
The iconic, conch-shell shaped museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, has been drawing contemporary art lovers since it opened in 1959, its unique cylindrical shape a work of art in itself. Inside, visitors take in a constantly evolving collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, modern and contemporary art, including permanent pieces by Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois.
- Douglas Rogers, Telegraph Travel’s New York expert
4. The Whitney Museum of American Art
Designed by Renzo Piano (the Italian architect who designed London's Shard, Europe's tallest builing), the museum found a new home next to the popular High Line elevated walkway in Manhattan’s trendy Meatpacking District in 2015. Beyond its striking angular tiered exterior, you’ll find equally fascinating collections of American contemporary art from the 20th and 21st centuries. Sprawled across several floors with outdoor terraces that also serve as open-air exhibition spaces, the Whitney showcases a range of works from more than 3,000 artists, from sculptures, paintings and prints to installations, video pieces and other media.
Details: whitney.org
Paris
5. Musée du Louvre
Both a collection of art and a royal palace, including parts of the medieval castle concealed in the basement, the Louvre is mind-boggling in its scale and sheer wealth of treasures: from Classical sculpture, Egyptian relics and Mesopotamian antiquities to the unmissable galleries of Italian Renaissance paintings, Rembrandts and Rubens, medieval artefacts and French neoclassical and Romantic painting. The secret to mastering the Louvre is to combine a few key works you definitely want to see with the discoveries you make by wandering aimlessly.
Details:louvre.fr
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6. Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet
This Second Empire villa is one of Paris’s secret gems, with its wonderful array of Empire furniture and the world’s largest collection of works by Claude Monet, including several vibrantly coloured water-lily canvases, most of them donated by the artist’s family.
Details: marmottan.com
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7. Musée National Rodin
The mansion where Rodin lived at the end of his life now contains an unrivalled collection of the sculptor’s work, arranged around its rooms and beautiful garden. In finished works and countless studies for the great Balzac, the Burghers of Calais or the figures that swarm all over the Gates of Hell, you can trace how he revolutionised sculpture at the end of the 19th century.
Details: musee-rodin.fr
- Natasha Edwards, Telegraph Travel's Paris expert
Rome
8. Vatican Museums
These are otherwise known as “the rooms full of papally collected or commissioned art that you have to schlep through to get to the Sistine Chapel”– but in fact there’s plenty to enjoy along the way, from classical statues such as the Laocoon, to Pinturicchio’s delightful Borgia Room frescoes. Book via the website – or be prepared to queue.
Details: vatican.va
9. Galleria Borghese
One of the world’s great private art collections, the haul that Cardinal Scipione Borghese assembled in his Roman garden villa includes Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, a gaggle of Caravaggios and Bernini’s sublime sculpture Apollo and Daphne. Later generations made some worthwhile additions, such as Canova’s risqué statue of Pauline Bonaparte.
Details:galleriaborghese.it
- Lee Marshall, Telegraph Travel’s Rome expert
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London
10. Design Museum
London's Design Museum reopened last November in its new ￡83 million home in the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington. "Framed by trees on the edge of Holland Park, the interior of this 1962 modernist building with its distinctive copper hyperbolic paraboloid roof has been re-imagined by British architect John Pawson, who has transformed it into a minimalist temple of pale Dinesen Oak and white marble. Now with three times the amount of space, the museum, which first opened in 1989 in a former banana warehouse in Shad Thames, can stage a wider range of exhibitions and extend its learning programme – which includes designers in residence," described Bethan Ryder.
Details: designmuseum.org
11. Sir John Soane’s Museum
The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture calls Sir John Soane’s Museum “one of the most complex, intricate, and ingenious series of interiors ever conceived”. It is also a delightful rabbit warren of a place, with interlocking rooms on different levels crammed from floor to ceiling with pictures, prints, drawings, plaster casts, antique fragments, books and architectural models.
The man who created it all was a discriminating collector with the hoarding mentality of a pack rat and a horror of an empty space. Sir John Soane displayed his collections with an eye for decorative pattern and symmetry, and not, as is usual in art galleries, to distinguish what is historically or aesthetically important from what is not.
- The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment
12. The Victoria & Albert Museum
The London landmark, which recently received a new director (former Labour MP and shadow education minister Tristram Hunt), saw the largest architectural revamp of its 100-year history earlier this year, with a new courtyard entrance and underground gallery forming part of the Exhibition Road Building Project.
"The work of the London-based architect Amanda Levete, the new Sackler Gallery is a game-changing addition to the museum’s arsenal of exhibition spaces. The existing temporary galleries are cramped, bisected by a corridor and suffer from the presence of a retro-fitted suspended ceiling," said the Telegraph's Ellis Woodman.
"The new courtyard capitalises on this change of atmosphere, bringing the street into the body of the museum. In achieving this Levete had to contend with the presence of a masonry screen which the building’s original architect, Aston Webb, had installed on the street-line as a means of disguising the museum’s boiler-house. The most controversial aspect of her work has been the creation of a series of new openings in this listed structure, which are now fitted with gates of perforated aluminium."
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Others not to be missed in London…
The National Gallery (nationalgallery.org.uk) opens until 9pm on Fridays, with occasional concerts and performances offering a charming, relaxed atmosphere. Both Tate Britain and Tate Modern (tate.org.uk) now do free Late at Tate nights every Friday until 10pm (Saturday as well at Tate Modern). The British Museum opens until 8.30pm on Friday nights (britishmuseum.org).
Madrid
13. Prado Museum
One of the greatest museums in the world, the Prado displays superb works by Spanish masters such as Velázquez, El Greco and Goya, but has wonderful Italian and Flemish collections, too, with paintings by Raphael, Titian and Tintoretto, Bosch and Rubens. There are usually at least two temporary exhibitions running as well.
Details: museodelprado.es
14. Reina Sofía Museum
The rehang of the permanent collections at the Reina Sofía modern art museum was completed in late 2010, with new displays on the fourth floor. Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica attracts the biggest crowds, but don’t miss the excellent works by Dalí, Miró and Tàpies.
Details: museoreinasofia.es
15. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Superlative collections of Western art from the 13th century to the present day, built up by the Thyssen-Bornemisza family and housed in a neo-classical palace. Highlights include paintings by Dürer, Titian, Raphael, Degas and Kandinsky, and there is usually at least one temporary exhibition running.
Details: museothyssen.org
- Annie Bennett, Telegraph Travel’s Madrid expert
Amsterdam
16. Rijksmuseum
The Dutch national treasure-house of art has at last re-opened after a decade-long renovation. Golden Age masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and so many more are on show alongside centuries’ worth of fine furniture, Delftware, costume and jewellery. There’s a superb Asian collection, and new aquisitions which bring the display up to the present day.
Details: rijksmuseum.nl
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17. Van Gogh Museum
More of the tortured artist’s paintings and drawings are collected here than anywhere in the world, and the temporary exhibitions of associated works are usually inspired and engrossing.
Details:vangoghmuseum.nl
Vincent van Gogh: 15 of the best paintings
- Rodney Bolt, Telegraph Travel's Amsterdam expert
Barcelona
18. MACBA
The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona showcases the work of mostly Spanish and Catalan artists from the last 60 years, with some occasionally great temporary exhibitions. The building itself, a huge white monolith designed by Richard Meier, is worth the visit alone.
Details: macba.cat
19. Museu Picasso
Picasso spent most of his formative years living in Barcelona, and the Museu Picasso documents his time here via sketches, paintings and ceramics produced during the early years of his career.
Details: museupicasso.bcn.cat
From coffee to cubism - a guided tour of Picasso’s Rome
- Sally Davies, Telegraph Travel's Barcelona expert
20. The Hermitage, St Petersburg
A day isn’t really enough to do justice to the Hermitage’s vast collection of art, which includes masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and Rembrandt. Indeed, officials say it would take around 11 years to examine every single exhibit. Wander on the vast Palace Square beforehand.
Details: hermitagemuseum.org
- Marc Bennetts, Telegraph Travel's St Petersburg expert
Florence
21. Galleria degli Uffizi
Italy’s richest and most celebrated art gallery, is housed in what was originally built as the Medici Whitehall – the governing dynasty’s administrative centre. It’s difficult to pick out the cherries from an already cherry-picked selection (there’s lots more in the vaults), but they would have to include Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi, Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus, Piero della Francesca’s twin portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, and Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni. Booking, however, is virtually essential.
Details:firenzemusei.it
22. Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Masaccio and Masolino’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel are better known – and very lovely they are too, breathing the simple humanism of the early Renaissance. But it’s well worth making time for the other great Florentine fresco cycle, decorating the private chapel of this mid-15th-century Medici palazzo: Benozzo Gozzoli’s Journey of the Magi, a lively transposition of the Biblical story to the Florence of 1439.
Florence puff
Details: palazzo-medici.it
23. La Specola
Florence University’s natural history museum houses a charmingly old-fashioned collection of botanical and zoological specimens, including a hippo that was given as a present to Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. But the final rooms are what most visitors come for: a series of increasingly gruesome wax anatomical models, sculpted in eye-popping detail between 1775 and 1791 as teaching aids for trainee doctors. Smaller children may be traumatised, but difficult-to-please teens (and boys of all ages) should enjoy being grossed out – especially by the collection’s coup de grace: three grisly wax tableaux of plague victims.
Details: msn.unifi.it
- Lee Marshall, Telegraph Travel's Florence expert
Athens
24. New Acropolis Museum
Inaugurated in June 2009, this light, airy glass-and-concrete building was designed by Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi. Archaic and classical finds from the Acropolis site are displayed here – proud statues of the ancients and life-like stone carvings of animals. The top floor is devoted to the marble frieze that once ran around the top of the Parthenon. About half of the pieces are originals, while the remainder are white plaster copies. The missing pieces were removed by Lord Elgin in 1801 and are now in the British Museum in London. The Greeks have wanted them back for decades, and hope that this blatant presentation will finally convince the British to return them.
Details:theacropolismuseum.gr
25. Benaki Museum
Housed in a neo-classical building with a lovely roof-terrace cafe, this museum traces Greek art right up the 20th century. Sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, paintings, furniture and costumes are on display, but top pieces include the Thessaly Treasure (a hoard of gold filigree jewellery set with precious stones, dating from the second century BC), two early paintings by El Greco, and the reconstruction of two 18th-century, wood-panelled, Ottoman-inspired living rooms.
Details: benaki.gr
- Jane Foster, Telegraph Travel's Athens expert
Brussels
26. Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles
Opposite it is the neo-Gothic Maison du Roi, now home to the Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles (Museum of the City of Brussels); this includes the collection of diminutive costumes made for Brussels’s famous mascot, the Manneken Pis – the statue of the little boy doing what his name suggests, which lies a short walk away, to the west.
Details:brusselsmuseums.be/en/musees/musees
27. Musées Royaux de Beaux Arts
Without making a song and dance about it, this collection is a showcase for the brilliance of Belgian art. It begins with the Flemish “primitives”, the late-medieval pioneers in oil painting, celebrated for their intense attention to detail. It then leads through Pieter Brueghel the Elder and the Younger to Rubens, master of dramatic composition, and Antony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens.
In the late 19th century, Belgium was a centre of Symbolism, producing work of haunting beauty and compelling weirdness. And then came the great surrealist René Magritte, to whom a whole wing of the museum has recently been devoted. Other great names in the history of art are represented too, but it is the Belgians who make the deepest impression.
Details: fine-arts-museum.be
28. Musée des Instruments de Musique (MIM)
With a collection of some 6,000 historical musical instruments to choose from, MIM can put on a show of astonishing range and quality. Three other factors work in its favour: the museum is housed in a beautifully renovated Art Nouveau building, formerly a department store; headphones bring the musical instruments alive; and the view over Brussels from the rooftop restaurant is unparalleled.
Details: mim.fgov.be
29. Musée du Cinquantenaire
This is Belgium’s hoard of international antiquities – by far the largest of a collection of heritage museums that (like the Musée des Instruments de Musique) come under the umbrella of the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire. There are great chunks of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome here.
But there is also plenty of local talent, including medieval Brussels tapestries, retables (sculptured altarpieces), and Art Nouveau objets d’art. They are housed in buildings originally designed for the 1880 international exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Belgian nationhood. The surrounding Parc Cinquantenaire also has a military museum, and an impressive collection of antique cars called Autoworld.
Details:kmkg-mrah.be
- Antony Mason, Brussels expert
30. Museum Island, Berlin
The Unesco heritage Museum Island comprises five conveniently adjacent museums, all located on an accessible “island” along the river Spree. Each museum is a destination in its own right and deserves at least half a day to explore. The Pergamon Museum has vast treasures from the Ancient Near East and Islamic art, though the Pergamon Altar, north wing and gallery of Hellenistic art are closed to the public until 2019 due to refurbishment; the Neues Museum holds Egyptian, prehistoric and classical treats, while the Bode Museum has an outstanding sculpture collection. Combination tickets are available for all five museums.
- Paul Sullivan, Telegraph Travel’s Berlin expert
31. Getty Villa + Getty Center, Los Angeles
The Getty Museum is spread over two lavish campuses. The most extravagant, the original Getty Villa in Malibu, is a modern recreation of a First century Roman villa built by oil tycoon J Paul Getty. The villa houses a world-class collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities. The Getty Center, which opened on a hillside in Brentwood in 1997 and cost $1.3 billion, looks more like a giant white pharmaceutical plant and houses a world class collection of American and European photographs, European art and furniture.
- Lucie Young, Telegraph Travel’s LA expert
32. Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Seoul
The Zaha Hadid-designed futuristic structure, featuring a curvaceous metallic fa?ade that is lit up by night, is one of Seoul’s greatest modern landmarks. The grounds of the multicultural complex houses a number of art and design venues including a design museum and other gallery/exhibition spaces, design shops, plus an eco-friendly park.
Details: ddp.or.kr
33. Museo Atlántico, Lanzarote
Museo Atlántico, an underwater collection of more than 300 sculptural works by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, opened to the public earlier this year. The installations can be found 14 metres beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in Bahía de Las Coloradas (Coloradas Bay), off the south coast of Lanzarote. The site spans an area of 2,500 square metres, and can be explored by scuba divers or from glass-bottomed boats.
Details:cactlanzarote.com
34. Museum of Broken Relationships, Croatia
Described as a “genuinely touching window on the human soul” by Telegraph Travel’s Chris Leadbeater, the brilliant attraction showcases a bizarre collection of objects connected to romances that are no more. Subtly illustrating the tragic-comedy that is love, it is now one of Zagreb’s most visited museums.
Zagrebs Museum of Broken Relationships
The museum opened its second branch last year in the City of Broken Dreams - Hollywood. The new collection of items studying failed relationships and their ruins follows in the footsteps of the original one in Zagreb, promising to take visitors on an emotional journey through a showcase of 115 unwanted artefacts from relationships past, exploring the “love, pain, drama, irony, humour and reconciliation” of break ups.
Details: brokenships.com
35. ArtScience Museum, Singapore
Built as part of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands Resort, the world’s first art and science museum features an unusual lotus-shaped structure. While it hosts several leading travelling exhibitions from around the world, its new permanent exhibition Future World showcases 16 incredible art installations and is said to be the country’s “largest interactive digital playground,” exploring themes including “nature, town, park and space”.
Details: marinabaysands.com/museum
36. Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark
Set about 25 miles north of Copenhagen and with views of Sweden across the Sound, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is one of Denmark’s most lauded cultural attractions.
“As a museum we stand apart in the sense that there is no one thing you have to see. Louisiana at heart is a place where you go to be. That said, one should pause to reflect in The Giacometti Gallery. The collection of Giacomettis, the proportions of the gallery and the view of the lake form an artistic totality – majestic, serene and breathtaking. The Sculpture Park with its Henry Moores and Alexander Calders and view of the sea cannot be missed either," Erik T?jner, the museum’s director, told Telegraph Luxury.
Details: en.louisiana.dk
37. Shanghai Museum, China
China's vast cultural heritage is celebrated at the exceptional Shanghai Museum, free to visit and one of the metropolis's most edifying and interesting attractions. A treasure trove of Chinese art, its galleries run the gauntlet from ancient bronze to Chinese calligraphy to Ming furniture - a must for fans of Chinese craftsmanship or interior-design acolytes keen for ideas on how to beautifully decorate their homes.
Details: shanghaimuseum.net
- John O'Ceallaigh, Telegraph Travel's Luxury Travel editor
38. Bildmuseet, Sweden
The contemporary art and design museum in the Swedish city of Ume?, the former residence of Stieg Larsson (author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and others from the Millennium book/film trilogy) and European Capital of Culture for 2014, was named as one of the most beautiful university art galleries in the world following a redesign in 2012. The building itself is a thoughtful work of art, made with a fa?ade of Siberian larch wood panelling, which will fade to a silver grey colour in a few years’ time, staggered with randomly-placed windows. Its stark white interior is warmed by the natural light piercing through its windows which offer scenic views from the museum’s riverside location.
Details: bildmuseet.umu.se
39. Chichu Art Museum, Japan
Japan's 'art island', tiny Naoshima boasts a disproportionate number of world-class installations, unexpected cultural distractions and world-class museums. In the latter category, Chichu Art Museum is built mostly underground - so as not to sully the island's largely unblemished beauty - and features vast exhibition spaces largely built to complement the artworks, by the likes of Monet and Walter De Maria, which they now house.
Details: benesse-artsite.jp
- John O'Ceallaigh, Telegraph Travel's Luxury Travel editor
40. Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Chile
The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino is one of the world’s best museums for ancient Central and South American artefacts. Exhibits range from a collection of 7ft-high chemamull (wooden person) grave markers to Taino spatulas, the latter used to induce vomit ahead of religious ceremonies.
21 reasons why you should visit Chile
Details: precolombino.cl
- Caroline Shearing, Telegraph Travel’s Hotels Editor
41. National Palace Museum, Taipei
A showcase for over 600,000 artefacts that were transported for safekeeping from mainland China to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, Taipei's National Palace Museum is a sprawling repository for some of the most exquisite Chinese artworks and crafts in existence. Its collection holds exceptional collections of jades, ceramics and lacquerwares, alongside more unexpected exhibits - look out for a cabbage made of coloured glass (beloved by the Taiwanese) and an intricately detailed, miniature boat, carved from an olive pit.
Details: npm.gov.tw/en/
- John O'Ceallaigh, Telegraph Travel's Luxury Travel editor
42. Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
Officially opening to the public on September 22, Cape Town's Zeitz MOCAA is set to become Africa's most important cultural attraction. Established through a partnership between the V&A Waterfront and former Puma CEO Jochen Zeitz, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art will showcase diverse modern art from throughout the continent; it is the first major museum of its kind in all of Africa. Visitors can also stay at Cape Town's Silo Hotel, which stands atop some of the complex.
- John O'Ceallaigh, Telegraph Travel's Luxury Travel editor
Which museums have we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
The Directors Guides