The desire to gather beautiful and important things goes back a very long time. Museums not only show off works of art, but they also keep them safe for future generations. We’re going to talk about the World’s Top 14 Museums today. Few places in the world have as big and important collections of art and artifacts as these.
1. Museo Nacional de Antropologia
In Mexico City, the Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) has items from Mexico’s pre-Columbian history. The museum has many important items, like the Sacred Cenote from Chichen Itza and the huge stone heads from the Olmec society. It opened in 1964.
The most famous item, though, is the Stone of the Sun. It wasn’t used as a calendar, but it does show the 20-day signs and the 4 eras of suns that came before the current 5th sun.
2. Tokyo National Museum
The Tokyo National Museum is the oldest and biggest museum in Japan. It opened in 1872. The museum’s collections are mostly old Japanese art and art from Asia that was made along the Silk Road. A lot of Greco-Buddhist work is also to be found.
3. Prado Museum
The Prado Museum in Madrid is one of the best museums in Spain. It has some of the best collections of European art from the 12th century to the early 19th century. The Majas by Goya (La Maja Vestida and La Maja Desnuda) and Las Meninas by Velázquez are the most well-known paintings in the museum.
4. Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which is in New York City’s Midtown Manhattan, is often called the most important modern art museum in the world. It may have the world’s best collection of modern classics, such as Monet’s Water Lilies, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and van Gogh’s Starry Night.
The building itself is one of the best things about MoMA, along with the art. A maze of glass paths lets you see art from many points of view. An $825 million makeover by Yoshio Taniguchi in 2004 added almost half as much room for exhibits.
5. Uffizi Gallery
It is one of the oldest and best-known art galleries in the world. It is in Florence, Italy. It is in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, which was built in the 1600s as the offices of the judges of Florence. The collections of paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance and ancient times are truly amazing. The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli is one of the pieces. There are often long lines that start before the doors even open.
6. Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met, which stands for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is an art museum in New York City. It is on the eastern edge of Central Park. This huge gothic-style building opened in 1872 and has had many additions made to it since then. Its two floors hold hundreds of rooms filled with more than two million works of art from all over the world and throughout history, spanning almost every genre of art. Besides its fixed collections, the Met also plans and hosts big traveling shows all year long.
7. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was designed by Frank Gehry. It is a beautiful modern art museum with a titanium shell that twists and turns. It may be the most famous building of the 1990s. There are beautiful, sensual curves that remind me of the ships that used to dock in Bilbao. They are covered in titanium circles that look like fish scales and sparkle in the sun. The museum has regular and temporary shows with art from Spanish and other artists around the world.
8. Rijksmuseum
You can find the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is the biggest and best museum of art and history in the Netherlands. There are many paintings from the Dutch Golden Age there, by artists like Vermeer and Rembrandt. The museum is getting a whole new look until 2013, but the most important works of art are still on display.
9. National Palace Museum
The National Palace Museum in Taipei has the world’s biggest collection of old Chinese artifacts and works of art. The museum opened as the Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 1925, not long after China’s last emperor was kicked out of the country.
During the last few years of the Chinese Civil War, the museum’s most valuable items were sent to Taiwan. It was already communist army time in Taiwan when things got there; they had taken over the Palace Museum.
10. Hermitage Museum
The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was started by Catherine the Great in 1764. It is a huge museum of art and culture that shows the best of its more than 3 million things from all over the world. The Hermitage is one of the best museums in the world. It has a beautiful setting and valuable works by Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Reubens, and others are shown there.
The collections are spread out over a big complex of six historic buildings, including the Winter Palace, which was once the home of Russian emperors.
11. British Museum
The British Museum in London has been around since 1753 and is a museum of history and culture. It has one of the biggest and most complete collections in the world, with more than seven million objects from all over the world. These objects tell the story of human culture from the beginning to the present day.
The Rosetta Stone, which is the key to reading hieroglyphs, and the biggest collection of mummies found outside of Egypt are among the items on display. It’s one of the best places to visit in London.
12. Vatican Museums
In the sixth century, Pope Julius II opened the Vatican Museums in Rome’s Vatican City. They are now one of the best museums in the world. The spiral stairs, the Raphael Rooms, and the beautifully decorated Sistine Chapel are the most well-known parts of the museums. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo painted the chapel ceiling with the help of Pope Julius II.
A lot of people today think that Michelangelo’s best paintings are the ceiling and especially The Last Judgment.
13. Louvre
If you want to see a lot of art, the Louvre in Paris is one of the best places to do it. The museum has been there since 1793 and is in the Louvre home, which used to be a royal home. In 1989, the famous glass tower was added to the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace. It is now the main entrance to the museum.
Its collections include things from old Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the Middle Ages, and France during the Napoleonic Wars. The most famous thing in the museum is, of course, Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the Mona Lisa, which is always crowded with tourists taking pictures.
14. Egyptian Museum
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is one of the best museums in the world. It has at least 120,000 pieces of old Egyptian artifacts. The museum has two main floors: the ground floor and the first floor. There is a large collection of papyrus and coins used by the Egyptians on the ground floor.
There are things from the last two kingdoms of Ancient Egypt and a lot of things from the Valley of the Kings on the first floor. The items from the Tomb of Tutankhamen and the Royal Mummy Room with its 27 royal mummies from the time of the Pharaohs are two of the most interesting parts.
