Best Museums in Europe
Best Museums in Europe.Europe is a hotbed of tradition. The continent’s lengthy records, peppered with Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Hungarian, and Napoleonic rule alongside epoch-defining intervals of art and tune, plus many nations’ colonial pasts mean that art, structure, and historical past are rich and varied.
Every European capital and certainly every important metropolis has a noteworthy museum, from wonderful artwork galleries to ancient archaeological web sites. Some of the museums themselves are housed in homes so exquisite that they’re attractions of their own proper.
So whether or not you’re an art aficionado, a family, or a keen historian, right here are a number of the best museums in Europe.
Louvre, Paris, France
The maximum visited museum within the international is likewise domestic to 2 of the arena’s most famed portions of art: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, the famed Hellenistic statue that dates from round 150BCE.
Visitors can spend days here in this important Parisian landmark at the banks of the River Seine and nonetheless no longer get to peer the whole thing way to it housing extra than 35,000 works of art and greater than 1/2 one million objects.
Even the constructing itself is a gem that Paris is well-known for, combining its very well cutting-edge iconic Louvre Pyramid front with its shimmering swimming pools with the fabulously ornate Louvre Palace, initially built inside the past due twelfth and early 13th centuries beneath Philip II.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
As its name implies, Amsterdam’s Museum Square is the area to visit inside the Dutch capital when it comes to artwork and lifestyle. Home of the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum, it also houses the Concertgebouw live performance area and the Van Gogh Museum.
Dedicated to the Dutch Master and his contemporaries, this is one of the maximum famous museums in Europe.
Housed across adjoining homes, the majority of the 2 hundred paintings, four hundred drawings, and seven hundred letters by means of the mythical artist can be observed within the older Rietveld Building, even as the Kurokawa Wing is used for principal brief exhibitions.
The largest series of Van Gogh’s works in the international, it is domestic to both the iconic Self-portrait (1888) and Sunflowers (1889), in addition to The Painter of Sunflowers (1888), a Paul Gauguin portrait of Van Gogh that mixes the 2 works.
Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece
For a few years, the Acropolis Museum changed into a low-key affair on the top of the famed Athenian fortress and adjacent to the Parthenon, the center-piece temple devoted to the goddess Athena.
That all changed in 2009 whilst this worldwide-magnificence museum became founded to expose off a number of the wonders of this maximum historical of web sites.
Housed in a modern building designed by means of French-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, the museum is constructed over an archaeological website, which means visitors can peer down on artifacts in a herbal setting as they look forward to access.
Archaeological findings from the Acropolis itself are displayed over three flooring and include findings from Roman and early Christian Athens.
Space is likewise reserved inside the museum for the plenty-desired return of the Parthenon Marbles which are currently, and controversially, housed in London’s British Museum.
Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
The Vasa Museum at the island of Djurgården within the Stockholm Archipelago is one of the first-rate museums in Europe, housing an nearly absolutely intact warship that dates lower back to the 17th century.
The 64-gun Vasa changed into sunk on her maiden voyage in 1628 and lay inside the dust of Stockholm harbor for 333 years before she turned into salvaged in 1961 and given a permanent domestic inside the museum in 1990.
Walking around the preserved deliver is a fascinatingly eerie revel in, given both the deliver’s length and the temperature and humidity-managed surroundings in which she desires to relaxation.
Around the deliver itself are some of famous approximately seventeenth-century lifestyles in Scandinavia, while a movie theater shows an equally charming film detailing her recuperation from the sea floor.
Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Spain
In a global in which there are 8 different museums devoted to modern grasp Pablo Picasso, selecting a favorite one can be a bit like deciding on a favourite toddler. If pushed, many might choose the one in the town said to be closest to his heart.
Housed across 5 adjoining medieval palazzos in La Ribera community in Barcelona, it’s miles home to greater than four,2 hundred pieces of art, a lot of them donated by way of Picasso himself, his near buddy Jaume Sabartés or contemporaries together with Salvador Dalí.
Dedicated specifically to his early years (maximum of the works are pre-1917), the museum is divided into three sections: painting and drawing, engraving, and ceramics, whilst a library of 6,000 books is a dream for those wishing to appearance deeper into Picasso’s existence.
Best Museums in Europe
Museu de Marinha, Lisbon, Portugal
Housed in the fifteenth century Jerónimos Monastery (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) in Lisbon’s Belem community, this international-well-known maritime museum is dedicated to a time when Portugal ruled the waves thanks to storied explorers together with Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama.
Founded by using King Luís I in 1863, this Lisbon museum homes ancient artwork, scale fashions of ships used in Portugal’s enlargement and a host of navigation instruments. One of the maximum staggering sections is that dedicated to the united states’s Royal Yachts, especially the cabins of Amélia used within the early 20th century through Carlos I.
Complete with tables laid with crockery and glassware, it offers an intimate glimpse into the life of the Portuguese monarchy at the time. Other outstanding exhibits encompass the Santa Cruz, the primary seaplane to cross the Atlantic.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
If taking walks via the streets of Florence is a bit like walking in a residing Renaissance-era museum, the Uffizi Gallery is one among its star attractions—and one of the high-quality museums in Europe.
Housed in a 16th-century, U-formed palazzo at first built to accommodate the town’s magistrates (uffizi method places of work), its lengthy chambers with their terrific frescoed ceilings take the breath away.
That feeling keeps because the art in Florence reveals itself in a succession of priceless classics by using the Old Masters, which include Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Rembrandt’s Self-portrait as a young guy and Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo.
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
When the Basque Government approached the Guggenheim Foundation and recommended the building of a museum to revitalize the metropolis’s downtrodden port vicinity around the Nervion Estuary, little could they have imagined that six years later that Spanish museum would be housed in what has gone directly to end up one of the most famous buildings in Europe.
Designed via famed architect Frank Gehry, the Bilbao Guggenheim’s glossy, metal strains have been hailed by using critics as a “masterpiece of the twentieth century”. The interiors and famous of this Spanish landmark don’t disappoint either.
Spreading out from the iconic The Flower atrium, galleries and external spaces host huge-scale works and temporary installations by way of present day artists which have covered the likes of David Hockney’s A Bigger Picture and Sir Norman Foster’s Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture.
Vatican Museums, Vatican City, Italy
Home to some of the best art museums in Italy, the Vatican Museums characteristic some 70,000 works of artwork amassed over the centuries through the papacy and the Catholic Church, with a few 20,000 being on show at any individual time.
Spread over 24 galleries, they encompass Pinacoteca Vaticana with works by means of Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio, the Museo Pio-Clementino with its Greek and Roman sculptures, and the Vatican Historical Museum that homes a collection of photographs of all the Popes from the sixteenth century onwards.
The sheer amount of artwork can be bewildering however there are absolute need to-sees: the famed Sistine Chapel with its Michelangelo-adorned altar and ceiling, and the four Stanze di Raffaello that feature Raphael’s masterpiece, The School of Athens.
Titanic Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Set proper by means of wherein the famed deliver became designed, built and released, Titanic Belfast tells the tale of Titanic from her concept to her tragic maiden voyage, and the lasting legacy of this maximum iconic of vessels.
Visiting here is one of the fine activities in Belfast. As nicely as a number of interactive famous that element the history of the deliver and the males and females that helped construct her, the museum and its surrounds (referred to as the Maritime Mile) are full of hidden symbolism consisting of the museum standing 126 ft (38m) excessive, the identical peak as Titanic’s hull.
Moored within the adjacent dock is SS Nomadic, a soft to the Titanic, restored to its 1911 glory.
Mucem, Marseille, France
Born in 2013 while Marseille held the honour of European Capital of Culture, the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (to present it its complete call) explores the history of the location from this most strategic of ports for alternate among Europe and North Africa.
This French museum is ready across buildings: J4, a transformed former port terminal, and the 17th century Fort Saint-Jean, a stone fort with perspectives out to sea, with the 2 related by way of a suspended footbridge over the water beneath.
After seeing the famous, one of the quality things to do in Marseille is to go to the museum’s terrace eating place for its amazing views over the water and the famed Corniche John F. Kennedy prom.
Herring Era Museum, Siglufjördur, Iceland
Set within the remote northern outpost of Siglufjörður in Iceland, the Herring Era Museum may not be considered one of Europe’s maximum visited museums, however it’s certainly considered one of its quirkiest.
Born from an original 1957 idea, it took until 1994 for the museum to open completely but has for the reason that gained numerous Icelandic and worldwide awards for its role in retaining local way of life.
Housed in a chain of homes that have been once an vintage salting station, the museum seems on the records of the herring industry that at one time was liable for almost half of of the Icelandic economic system and 20% of the usa’s exports.
Visitors can take inside the museum’s unique boats, view archive photographs and movies, and notice salting demonstrations.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Set like the Van Gogh Museum around Museum Square in Amsterdam, the national museum of the Netherlands is dedicated to extra than 800 years of Dutch arts and history, and is the united states’s maximum visited museum.
Drawn from a group of extra than one million gadgets, the museum presentations 8,000 at any one time, such as 2,000 paintings by using the likes of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Steen and Vermeer, with the previous’s The Night Watch being a spotlight of a visit.
As nicely as international-renowned artwork, there’s a small however extremely fine gallery of Asian artwork, in addition to sculptures, weapons, photographs and style, including a 1965 Mondrian dress designed with the aid of Yves Saint Laurent.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Housed in the Gare d’Orsay, a railroad station constructed at the Left Bank of the Seine for the 1900 World Fair, some say the Musée d’Orsay is extra of a Parisian must-see than the Louvre. That’s open to debate, of path, however the museum is truly extra doable.
One of the quality museums in the global, the Beaux Arts building itself is an architectural masterpiece with its ornate curved glass ceilings that completely suits a excellent series of paintings, photographs, furnishings, picture arts and sculptures relationship from 1848 to 1914.
Highlights encompass works via Renoir, Van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas.
Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Olympia, Greece
One of the ancient international’s most critical museums, this small but superb series shows a number of the maximum crucial finds from the excavations of the Temple of Zeus and the birthplace of the Olympic Games.
First opened in 1882 as Greece’s first museum outdoor Athens and set on the heart of the encircling archaeological web site (which can also be visited at the same entry price ticket), its 12 galleries display sculptures, terracotta pots, mosaics and bronze artifacts from prehistoric times to the early-Christian length.
Highlights include the beautiful significant corridor showing the sculptures that adorned the Temple of Zeus and the famed statue of Hermes Holding the Infant Dionysus, by using the sculptor Praxiteles.
Skansen Open Air Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
The world’s oldest open-air museum changed into founded in 1891 with the aid of Artur Hazelius, a Swedish folklorist who wanted to create a illustration of lifestyles in this beautiful European u . S . before the arrival of industrialization.
Set at the island of Djurgården inside the Stockholm Archipelago, it features round 150 traditional homes (lots of that have been moved from someplace else inside the Country And reconstructed right here), in addition to garden plots, farm animals and a Nordic zoo with native natural world.
Staff dress in length dress to add to the authenticity, and there are regular displays of conventional crafts, from butter making to glass blowing.