The most famous museums in the world. Museums of the world that you can visit without leaving your home Popular museums of the world

220 years ago, in November 1793, the most visited and one of the largest art museums in the world, the Louvre, opened to the general public. In honor of this event, we talk about it and other most popular museums in the world.

1. Louvre, France.

This central landmark of Paris, located on the right bank of the Seine River, is visited annually by about 9.5 million people. Before becoming a museum, the Louvre was a fortress and palace of French kings. However, during French Revolution National constituent Assembly decided that the Louvre would be used as a museum where national masterpieces would be exhibited.

Thus, in 1793 the museum was opened to the general public with a collection of 537 paintings. Under Napoleon, the Louvre was renamed the Musée Napoleon, and its art collection was expanded. However, subsequently the collection was steadily replenished. And in 1989, the palace acquired an unusual architectural element - a glass pyramid, which today is the main entrance to the museum. It was designed by an architect Chinese origin Yo Ming Pei.

The appearance of this pyramid in front of a medieval building shocked many people and caused stormy criticism, however, despite this, the pyramid was destined to become part of the architectural ensemble of the Louvre and one of the symbols of Paris. Today the museum's collection consists of more than 350 thousand objects and works of art that were created in the period from ancient times to the first half of the 19th century. The main attractions of the Louvre are the painting “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci, as well as the sculptures “Venus de Milo” and “Nike of Samothrace”.

Sculpture "Nike of Samothrace". Photo by: Thomas Ulrich.

2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City, is the largest art museum in the United States with the largest collection of art in the world. About 6 million visitors visit it annually.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by: Arad Mojtahedi.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. Among them were entrepreneurs and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the time, who wanted to open a museum to introduce art to the American people. The museum opened on February 20, 1872 and today occupies about 190 thousand m².

The museum's main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park, is one of the world's largest art galleries, while a smaller building in Upper Manhattan houses medieval art. The permanent collection of the museum contains works of art that were created in the period from antiquity to the present day. There you can see paintings and sculptures of almost all European masters, such as Botticelli, Rembrandt, Degas, Rodin and others, and also get acquainted with the extensive collection contemporary art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is home to collections of musical instruments, period costumes, accessories and weapons from around the world. By the way, one of the museum’s many impressive masterpieces is the copper engraving “Adam and Eve” by Albrecht Durer.

Engraving "Adam and Eve".
3. British museum, Great Britain.

This museum is located in London, and it is dedicated to the history and culture of mankind. Its permanent collection, numbering about 8 million items, is one of the largest and most comprehensive. About 5.5 million people visit the museum every year. Entry to this museum is free.

The British Museum was created in 1753 and was formed primarily from the collections of its founder, the physician and scientist Hans Sloane. The museum opened to the public on 15 January 1759 at Montagu House, an aristocratic mansion located in London's Bloomsbury district, where it remains today.

The UK's largest museum houses archaeological and ethnographic collections that number more than eight million objects. And the museum's Egyptian Gallery boasts the world's second-best collection of Egyptian antiquities, including, for example, the Rosetta Stone with an inscription of gratitude carved on it in 196 BC. The Egyptian priests addressed this inscription to Ptolemy V Epiphanes, a monarch from the Ptolemaic dynasty.

4. Tate Modern, UK.

This gallery is located in London and is the most popular contemporary art gallery in the world , since about 5.3 million people visit it every year.

Tate Modern is a former power station on the south bank of the River Thames in Battersea, which was built between 1947 and 1963. Today, the gallery building still resembles a 20th century factory in its appearance, both outside and inside. So when you walk into the gallery space, you are greeted by dark gray walls, steel beams and concrete floors. The collections at Tate Modern consist of works of modern art created between 1900 and the present day. The gallery building has 7 floors, numbered from 0 to 6. Moreover, each floor is divided into 4 wings, which correspond to certain themes or subjects.

For example, in 2012, exhibits on the following topics. The "Poetry and Dreams" wing is dedicated to surrealism, "Structure and Clarity" focuses on abstract art, the Transformed Vision wing is dedicated to expressionism, while Energy and Process focuses on the artistic movement of Arte Povera and features works by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Kazimir Malevich, Ana Mendieta and Mario Merz.

5. London National Gallery, UK.

It is located in Trafalgar Square and is visited by about 5 million people annually.

Unlike other major museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed through nationalization, that is, transfer royal collection arts into state ownership. It came about when the British government bought 38 paintings in 1824 from the heirs of John Angerstein, an insurance broker and patron of the arts. Since this acquisition, the gallery has been replenished only by its directors, in particular the artist Charles Eastlake, and by private donations, which make up two-thirds of the collection. Today the gallery is owned by the UK public and is therefore free to enter. The London National Gallery used to have a permanent exhibition, but today it is constantly changing.

6. Vatican Museums.

Presented in the Vatican Museums huge collection exhibits collected by the Roman Catholic Church over several centuries. About 5 million people visit museums every year.

The Vatican Museums have 22 separate art collections. And, perhaps, the most famous of them is kept in the Pius Clement Museum, where magnificent classical sculptures are presented. Pinacoteca Brera ( Art Gallery) houses medieval and Renaissance masterpieces. The Gregorian Egyptian Museum houses ancient Egyptian exhibits, and the Gregorian Etruscan Museum contains numerous Etruscan household items. But, of course, the main attractions of the Vatican Museums are The Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, and dances by Raphael.

Stanzas of Raphael.

7. Imperial Palace Museum, Taiwan.
One of the national museums of the Republic of China, it has a permanent collection of approximately 696,000 ancient Chinese artifacts and works of art. The collection tells the story of more than 8,000 years Chinese history from the Neolithic to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). Most of the collection was formed by the emperors of China.

The Imperial Palace Museum is located in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei and is visited by approximately 4.4 million people annually. The main attractions of the museum are painting and calligraphy, as well as rare books, the number of which in the museum reaches 200 thousand volumes.

8. National Gallery of Art, USA.
Located in Washington, D.C., this gallery attracts approximately 4.2 million visitors annually. It was founded in 1937 by decision of the US Congress. A large collection of art objects, as well as funds for the construction of the gallery, was donated by the American banker and billionaire Andrew William Mellon.

Paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, medals, as well as decorative arts tell gallery visitors about the development Western art from the Middle Ages to the present day. In the National Gallery of Art you can see the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in America, as well as the world's largest mobile ( kinetic sculpture), ever created by the American sculptor Alexander Calder.

Portrait of Ginevra de Benci.

9. Center Pompidou, France. The Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture is a cultural center in the Beaubourg quarter of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, built in high-tech style. About 3.8 million people visit the Pompidou Center every year.

The center is named after Georges Pompidou, the president who served from 1969 to 1974. He ordered the construction of this cultural center. The Pompidou Center officially opened on January 31, 1977. Today it houses a huge public library, State Museum of Contemporary Art, which is the largest museum of contemporary art in Europe, and the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music (IRCAM). Interestingly, according to the architect’s design, Alexander Calder’s mobile, whose height is 7.62 meters, was installed in front of the center building.

10. Orsay Museum, France.
This museum, located on the left bank of the Seine River in Paris, is visited by about 3.6 million people annually.

It was created in a former railway station built in the Beaux Arts style (eclectic style) between 1898 and 1900. By 1939, the station's short platforms became unsuitable for the large trains that were then emerging, so the station was used only for commuter trains. Subsequently, the railway station was used only as a location for filming films, such as, for example, “The Trial” by Orson Welles, based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka.

Main hall of the Orsay Museum. Photo by: Benh Lieu Song.

And in 1970, it was decided to demolish the station, but Jacques Duhamel, Minister of Cultural Affairs, was against this, and the station joined the list historical monuments France. A few years later, a proposal was made to make a museum in the station building. And finally, in July 1986, the museum was ready to receive exhibits. Another 6 months passed, and in December 1986 the doors of the museum opened to receive visitors.
Today the museum displays mainly objects French art, dating from 1848 to 1915. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works in the world, including artists such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne and Van Gogh.

When you go traveling, there are many ways to create your excursion itinerary. But almost everyone includes a visit to museums. Museums are an ideal destination for history and culture lovers. Today, the world's greatest museums offer a variety of interactive and engaging experiences that can allow you to discover the secrets of history in your own unique way. This selection contains 10 museums that are the most famous and recognizable landmarks in the world. You will be impressed by them alone appearance, not to mention what awaits inside.

1. Paris Louvre

Without a doubt the most famous museum in the world, the Louvre was a medieval fortress and palace of the kings of France before it became a museum two centuries ago. Even modernizing the square with the addition of a glass pyramid in its center does not take anything away from the historical charm of the Louvre Palace. The museum's collections, which range from the birth of great ancient civilizations to the first half of the 19th century, are among the most outstanding on the planet. You will find here the works of the most famous artists in history, such as da Vinci and Rembrandt. The main attraction of the Louvre is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

2. Hermitage, St. Petersburg

This gigantic museum has the world's largest collection of paintings. This is a stunning place covering the history of the world from the Stone Age to the present, and the Golden Room is especially impressive with its amazing precious stones. The Hermitage Museum is the most visited in Russia. It is scenically located along the waterfront area in Downtown St. Petersburg. This is an entire museum complex that includes six different buildings of unique architectural design. Without a doubt, the Emitage is one of the greatest museums in the world, an outstanding landmark of St. Petersburg.

3. British Museum in London

Millions of works of art from all continents are collected here. The British Museum's galleries focus on Egypt, Greece, Roman civilization, Asia, Africa and medieval Europe, tracing human history and culture. The Parthenon Marbles, which once adorned the Parthenon in Athens, are kept here. The museum attracts six million visitors every year. If you can't make it to the Egyptian Museum, then you can view the largest and most comprehensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo right here. Also impressive is the new reading room of the British Museum, which you see in the photo below:

4. Egyptian Museum in Cairo

At the Egyptian Museum in Cairo you will find the most complete collection Egyptian art in the world. Among the thousands of treasures are also famous exhibits from the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1835, the Egyptian government founded the "Egyptian Antique Treasure Service" in an attempt to stop the looting archaeological sites and arrange an exhibition of collected exhibits. In 1900, the Egyptian Museum building was built, which now houses more than 120,000 objects from the prehistoric era to the Greco-Roman period, including ancient sculptures of the Sphinx. If you are exploring the sights of Egypt, you should not miss the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

5. Uffizi Gallery in Florence

UNESCO estimates that 60% of the most popular artwork in the world are in Italy, and more than half of them are located in Florence. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence will amaze you to the core. This is definitely one of the finest collections of paintings and sculpture on the planet, with works dating back to the Renaissance by masters such as da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Caravaggio and many more. One of the main attractions here is Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

6. Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

Established in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art houses more than two million works of art from around the world, from antiquity to modern times. You'll find everything from Islamic and European paintings to collections of weapons and armor. Although there are many other great museums in New York, such as the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan is one of the most essential. This is truly one of the greatest museums in the world.

7. Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

8. Vatican Museum

The impressive Vatican Museum contains 22 separate collections, ranging from Etruscan and Egyptian art to maps and modern religious art. Even if you are not religious, you will still be impressed by the sheer beauty and magnificence of Michelangelo's dome and Bernini's spiral columns. The main assets here are the renovated Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms.

9. Prado Museum in Madrid

Although its collection is less impressive, the Prado is one of the most respected and visited museums in the world. The Prado Museum's greatest treasure is Spanish art, with works by Velazquez, Goya, Murillo, El Greco and many other celebrities. Although the museum specializes in paintings, it also houses a large number of drawings, coins, medals and decorative arts. The museum's neoclassical facade is typical of the city's 18th century architecture. Special attention It is worth paying attention to Rubens' Three Graces. It is one of the twenty most visited museums in the world.

10. National Museum Archeology in Athens

Completes the collection with greatest museums World Museum of Archeology in Athens. This is the best place to admire the masterpieces of ancient Greece.

Users of the popular travel resource TripAdvisor named the best museums in the world.

In total, there are 591 museums in the TripAdvisor rating, from which the 25 best in the world were selected. It is noteworthy that the Hermitage was ahead of such treasures as the London National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Vasa Museum in Stockholm and the National Anthropological Museum in Mexico City.

About what masterpieces can be seen in the collections of these museum collections in our review.

1st place. Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

It presents one of the most large collections art in the world - more than two million exhibits, dating back to Ancient culture And Ancient Egypt and ending with canvases of almost everyone modern masters painting. The entire museum collection is today divided into 19 independent sections. The largest in terms of the number of exhibits is the “Art of Asia” section, where more than 60 thousand objects are exhibited, reflecting the entire history Central Asia. Another “celebrity” of the museum is the “Egyptian Section,” the collection of which is one of the richest in the world: according to experts, it is second only to Egypt itself with its pyramids. For example, one of the halls displays the entire ancient Egyptian temple of Dendur.
Perhaps, the “Weapons and Armor” section, which contains weapons from all over our planet, from the fifth to the nineteenth century, enjoys perhaps the greatest interest among visitors. The volume of the collection is about 14 thousand items, among them many things that were used by royalty, including the armor of the King of England Henry VIII, King Henry II of France and Emperor Ferdinand I.

2nd place. Orsay Museum in Paris.

These are three floors of unique collections, mainly impressionist and post-impressionist. About 4000 exhibits. This is how the scandalous work is presented here French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux - sculpture of Count Ugolino, created by him under the impression of reading “ Divine Comedy» Dante. One of the most terrible characters in the work is depicted in languid anticipation of the death of his children. Another pearl of Orsay - the painting "Olympia" - one of early works Edouard Manet, one of the founders of impressionism. His “Luncheon on the Grass” is also exhibited in Orsay.

A separate room is dedicated to the work of Gustave Courbet: one of the artist’s most famous works, “Funeral at Ornans,” and another equally famous painting, “The Origin of the World,” which can still shock the viewer today, are exhibited in Orsay.
In Orsay you can trace the formation of another great artist - Claude Monet. Several works by the great impressionist are exhibited here: “Women in the Garden”, “Magpie”, “Rouen Cathedral in the Sun”.

3rd place. Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is also famous for its paintings French impressionists and post-impressionists, as well as American art. These are dozens of paintings by Claude and Edouard Monet, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre Auguste Renoir. Masterpieces of the collection: Van Gogh’s paintings “Bedroom in Arles” and “Self-Portrait”, “Two Sisters” by Pierre Auguste Renoir, “At the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, “Parisian Street in Rainy Weather” by Gustave Caillebotte.
In addition to painting, the Art Institute of Chicago houses textiles and photographs that characterize culture early period history of almost all of North America. The museum halls also display furniture from the late Middle Ages from Europe and Asia, armor of European knights and coats of arms famous names Old World, handicrafts made of porcelain, glass and silver, brought here from different parts of the planet.

4th place. Prado Museum in Madrid.

Opened in 1819, the museum has one of the world's largest collections of European art. Today its collection consists of more than 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 4,800 prints, 8,000 drawings and a huge number of decorative arts and historical documents. The permanent exhibition of the museum includes about 1,300 objects of art. Today the Prado has the most full meeting works by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Diego Velazquez, Goya. Here you can see paintings by such masters as Raphael, van Eyck, Rubens, Durer, Titian and other important artists.

5th place Louvre in Paris.

Another museum with an exclusive collection European painting, sculpture and other forms of fine art from the Middle Ages to the birth of Impressionism, as well as an unrivaled collection of antiquities from the Middle East, Egypt, Rome and Greece. The most famous paintings of the Louvre: “La Gioconda” by Leonardo da Vinci, “The Beautiful Gardener” by Raphael, “The Little Beggar” by Murillo, “The Lacemaker” by Vermeer, “Self-Portrait with a Thistle” by Durer.
The most famous sculptures museum - the Venus de Milo, found in 1820 and then acquired by the French ambassador from the Turkish government, and the Nike of Samothrace, found in parts in 1863 on the island of Samothrace.

6th place. State Hermitage Museum.

The museum presents the entire retrospective of world art - from the Stone Age to the end of the 20th century. The art gallery of the “old masters” is very popular: the Florentines are also here High Renaissance, Bolognese school, “little Dutch”, paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo, French classicism and rococo. There are Italian and Old Dutch "primitives", Spanish and English school. Among the pearls of the collection of old European paintings is “ Madonna Benoit"Leonardo da Vinci, "Judith" by Giorgione, "Portrait of a Lady" by Correggio, "St. Sebastian by Titian, The Lute Player by Caravaggio, The Return prodigal son"Rembrandt, "Lady in Blue" by Gainsborough. The museum has rich collections of paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Poussin, Titian, Veronese, Claude Lorrain and others.

7th place. London National Gallery.

Is one of best meetings Western European painting, which contains paintings by almost all great artists, and also represents all schools of European painting. Today, the gallery houses about 2,500 paintings that date from the 13th to the 20th centuries. Feature of the exhibition: all paintings in the gallery are exhibited in chronological order. The following masterpieces are exhibited here: “The Raising of Lazarus” by Sebastiano del Piombo, “Venus and Adonis” by Titian, “The Rape of the Sabine Women” by Rubens, Canaletto’s landscape “The Stonecutter’s House”, “Saint George” by Tintoretto, “ Holy family"Titian, "The Holy Family" by Andrea del Sarto, "Woman Bathing in a Stream" by Rembrandt.

8th place. Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The museum's unique collection, accumulated over centuries, contains many masterpieces of Dutch and world art. Here you can see the magnificent “Night Watch” by Rembrandt, several paintings by Vermeer, Van Dyck and Jan Steen. The museum has a rare collection of Asian art, an extensive collection of prints, drawings and classical photography.

9th place. Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

The museum ship Gustav Vasa (Vasa) was created around a Swedish ship, which became famous for its stupidity, as history claims. A very curious incident happened to it: it, being the royal flagship, sank after swimming only 1 mile! There have been many attempts to raise Vasa's ship. In the end, it was raised in 1961, restored for 30 years, and a museum was built around it in 1990. Today the exhibition presents objects raised from the bottom in different parts of the world's oceans.

10th place. National Anthropological Museum in Mexico City.

Collected here unique collection archaeological and anthropological artifacts of the pre-Columbian era found in Mexico. This is evidence of the culture of the Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, Toltecs and other indigenous peoples of the American continent.
The museum includes 23 permanent exhibition halls. Most famous exhibit- Aztec artifact, “Sun Stone”, also called the Aztec calendar. The diameter of the stone circle is 3.35 m, thickness -1.22 m, it was found in the center of Mexico City in Zocalo Square in 1790.

Rounding out the ranking of the 25 best museums in the world are the National Gallery of Art in Washington (USA, District of Columbia), the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, the Terracotta Warriors and Qin Horse Museum in Xi'an (China), the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires and the New Museum. Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa) in Wellington.

Let us remind you that the Travelers’ Choice awards are awarded to the best tourist attractions in the world based on the results of an analysis of millions of reviews and opinions of travelers. To determine the winners, an algorithm is used that takes into account the quality and quantity of reviews about museums in different countries of the world collected over the past 12 months.

Hello, dear guys! And to you, dear adults, a big and warm greeting too!

Probably each of you has been to a museum at least once. Every day around the world, thousands of tourists line up in long lines to see works of science and art, visit various exhibitions and then exchange their impressions of what they saw.

Many of the cultural attractions are famous throughout the planet. Do you know those - those where any traveler would like to go?

I suggest you remember the most famous museums in the world, scattered across different countries, so that when you get ready for a long journey, you can plan a visit to them in your excursion program. Well, right now, so that you can talk about them in an interesting and exciting way in class.

So, the top ten most famous of the famous, according to the ShkolaLa blog.

Lesson plan:

Paris Louvre

Once a medieval fortress and then home to French kings, it opened to visitors in 1793. 160106 square meters occupied total area, more than 400 thousand exhibits - all this is about the great and fascinating Louvre!

Its centrally located glass pyramid attracts around 9.5 million visitors each year and is photographed as one of the symbols of Paris. This is the place where one of the world's artistic mysteries is located - Da Vinci's painting "Mona Lisa".

Today the Louvre has seven huge departments, in which you can, as they say, examine the exhibits in detail in only a week, no less. Here are present:

• department of applied arts;
• halls of painting, graphics and sculpture;
• art of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient East;
• Islamic and Greek departments;
• Roman hall;
• and the culture of the Etruscan Empire.

Vatican Museums in Rome

The exhibition complex has 1,400 halls and contains 50,000 objects. Be prepared to walk about 7 kilometers to see all the exhibits on display.

The heart of the Vatican Museum is considered to be the Sistine Chapel, a Renaissance monument whose walls were painted by Michelangelo. You can reach it only by going through the entire museum corridor.

They began to build the Italian museum back in the 4th century - then the first stones of St. Peter's Church were laid, only in the 9th century the walls appeared, and by the 13th century they were built into the papal Vatican residence. Every year, about 5 million visitors come here to see with their own eyes the treasures collected by Roman Catholics over several centuries.

British Museum in London

The exhibition center, which opened in 1759, has a rather complicated history, and there are dark spots in its description. It is called not only a museum of all civilizations, but also a repository of stolen masterpieces.

This is a place where cultural objects of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Asia and Africa are found, as well as medieval Europe. But many of the 8 million exhibits appeared in the British Museum through dishonest means. Thus, the ancient Egyptian Rosetta Stone, as well as some other treasures from Egypt, came here after being taken from Napoleon’s army.

From Greece to strange resolution Precious sculptural exhibitions were taken to London by the Turkish ruler.

By the way, entry to the British Museum is absolutely free.

Japanese National Museum in Tokyo

Dedicated to nature and science, it is distinguished by the fact that, along with the wonders of technology, it contains stuffed animals, found remains of dinosaurs and their models.

Here, on the roof of a six-story building, you will find a botanical garden with sun umbrellas that automatically open when you approach. There is a “forest hall” where you can wander among the rich flora.

In the global gallery you can follow the evolution of all life on Earth and get acquainted with modern technologies, and in Japanese find out historical facts about the land of the rising sun.

This museum is also on the list of famous places because visitors can become scientists for a moment and personally conduct a series of experiments.

American Metropolitan

This museum is located in New York and is rightfully one of the most famous. Judge for yourself: artifacts from the Paleolithic era are collected here, which are adjacent to modern exhibits from the field of pop art, there are cultural objects from Africa, the East and Europe, paintings from the 12th to the 19th centuries, musical instruments, weapons and clothing of the peoples of five continents.

The museum appeared thanks to a group of entrepreneurs public figures and artists who donated their collections to him, and they were replenished with two million exhibition items. In general, there is something to see here!

America's Cultural Heritage Plaza is divided by luxurious passages and staircases that unite buildings from different eras with tall columns, fountains and stained glass windows. Moreover, its name has nothing to do with underground transport, but is derived from the word “metropolis”, that is, “big city”.

Madrid Prado Museum

The Spanish Cultural Center for Painting has collected more than 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 8,000 drawings, and 1,300 objects of art under one roof. It got its name thanks to the park of the same name in which it is located.

Although there are no elegant interiors or gilded staircases here, the museum contains a huge number of collections of paintings from different European schools: Spanish, Italian, German, British, most of which were collected by the church and representatives of the royal family.

By the way, there is a copy of the “Mona Lisa” located in the Louvre, painted by a student of Leonardo da Vinci.

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

The main state museum of Holland is located in an ancient palace with towers and relief sculptures and is divided into 200 halls, where many masterpieces of Dutch and world art are located. The red brick building stands on the canal embankment and stretches for an entire block.

The main masterpiece of the Amsterdam museum is Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch".

There are also canvases by artists from the Golden Age. And also exhibition halls are replete with various antique items from antique furniture to porcelain dishes.

St. Petersburg Hermitage

Russia can also rightfully be included in the list and boast of a museum property known throughout the world. The Russian cultural giant is famous for the world's largest collection of paintings. Here you can get acquainted with history from the Stone Age to the present, and the Golden Room is a separate story, because jewelry is collected there Russian Empire and not only!

The Hermitage originates from the collection of Empress Catherine II and, having subsequently expanded, today represents a museum complex of six buildings, where more than 3 million exhibits are presented.

Cairo Museum

This cultural site was until recently known for its complete collection of Egyptian art, which contains thousands of treasures from the tombs of Tutankhamun.

Before the revolution in Egypt, the Cairo museum had more than 120,000 ancient exhibits, including monumental sculptures of the Sphinx ancient period, tombs and mummies of Egyptian pharaohs, jewelry of queens.

We can only hope that the Egyptian nation will be able to preserve its wealth.

Archaeological Museum in Athens

It is the largest cultural center in Greece, housing exhibits different eras, but the collections of ceramics and sculpture are on the list of the richest in the world.

The museum's diverse collections include finds dating back to 6800 BC, including clay, stone and bone vessels, weapons, jewelry and tools.

Various museum attractions

Today we have compiled a list of ten famous museums the world, located in different countries, which are on everyone’s lips. But there are also museums in the world that few people know about, but which would be worth finding out about, because they are very unusual. The video below shows some of them.

I hope the information presented in this article will help you in developing your research projects.

Good luck with your studies!

Evgenia Klimkovich.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The annual ranking of The Art Newspaper collected information on the world's largest museums in 2016 and identified patterns. The Louvre, despite any terrorist attacks, is still the most visited museum in the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) supplanted the British Museum (London) from second place; the Vatican Museums were pushed ahead of London's National Gallery. The State Hermitage is firmly in the top ten, and the Reina Sofia Center for the Arts (Madrid) managed to jump into the last carriage.

MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art had to move

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Whitney Museum of American Art, which moved to a new building in the center of Manhattan in 2015, forced out the traditionally dominant Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Whitney Museum hosted five of the ten most visited New York exhibitions of 2016.

However, despite the meteoric rise of the Whitney Museum, MoMA and the Metropolitan remain the leaders among New York museums. MoMA is still in first place, thanks to the staff who performed the work by French choreographer Jérôme Bel every day over a long weekend in October. This performance attracted up to 6.8 thousand people a day. The more traditional exhibition “Picasso Sculpture,” held there, organized jointly with the Picasso Museum in Paris, was visited daily by about 5.9 thousand people.

Paris and Brussels are slowing down, Madrid is on the rise

Louvre, Paris

The decline in the flow of foreign tourists after a series of terrorist attacks continues to affect attendance at the Louvre, but it still tops the list of the most popular museums in the world with 7.4 million visitors in 2016 (in 2015 this figure was 8.6 million). Since 2014, attendance at France's premier museum has dropped by nearly 2 million, meaning ticket revenue has fallen significantly - while the costs of keeping the public safe have soared. Attendance at the Orsay Museum also decreased from 3.4 million in 2015 to 3 million last year. But the Pompidou Center, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, is less dependent on tourists from the USA, China and other countries. Its attendance in 2016 increased by 275 thousand people and amounted to 3.3 million.

The terrorist attacks in Brussels last March also appear to have had an impact on visitor numbers to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, which includes several sites including the Magritte Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Attendance at the Belgian museum cluster fell by more than a quarter - from 776 thousand people in 2015 to 497 thousand in 2016.

And here largest museums Madrid, on the other hand, is on the rise. In 2016, the Reina Sofía was visited by 400 thousand more people (3.7 million) than in 2015, and the Prado surpassed the 3 million threshold, which it has not managed to do since 2012. About 600 thousand people - or a fifth of the total number of visitors for the year - came to the Prado for large-scale exhibition « Hieronymus Bosch", dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.

Successes and defeats in London

Courtyard of the British Museum, London

A slight decline in visitor numbers to the British Museum and an increase in attendance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art mean London and New York are now neck and neck. The Met does not share attendance at its three sites: the main one on Fifth Avenue, the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan and the Metropolitan Breuer, which opened last year. Together they attracted a record 7 million people. And the London British Museum, which has only one site, was visited within last year 6.4 million viewers.

The National Gallery in London has recovered from strikes in 2015, which forced many of its halls to temporarily close. With almost 6.3 million visitors, it remains ahead of the recently expanded Tate Modern, which had a total attendance of 5.9 million, its all-time record. According to our data, Tate Modern remains the world's most popular museum of modern and modern art.

*Institutions located in several buildings are marked with an asterisk. The table shows their summarized indicators. The individual figures are: National Gallery of Victoria (National Gallery of Victoria International - 1,985,005, Ian Potter Centre: Australian National Gallery of Victoria - 683,460); National Galleries of Scotland (National Gallery of Scotland - 1,544,069, National Gallery of Modern Art of Scotland - 503,763, National Portrait Gallery of Scotland - 322,219); J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty Center - 1,569,565, Getty Villa - 453,902); Queensland Art Gallery/GoMA (Queensland Art Gallery - 572 762, Queensland Art Gallery of Contemporary Art - 667 657). Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters, Metropolitan Breuer) and San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts (de Young Museum and Legion of Honor) - separate data not provided.