TOP 5 MUSEUMS

The Louvre, or Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre) in Paris is a historic monument, the world’s most visited art museum, and one of the most extensive museums in the world. Situated in the 1st arrondissement (district) on the Right Bank of the river Seine, the Louvre is one of the city’s chief landmarks. Within its galleries almost 35,000 items dating from prehistoric times up to the 19th century are displayed over an area of 60,600 m² (652,300 ft²).

The museum is located in the Palais du Louvre (Louvre Palace), which was indeed originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II. Some traces of the fortress are still visible. The building received numerous additions before attaining its present form as the Louvre Palace. In 1682 Louis XIV elected to establish his permanent household at the Palace of Versailles, which left the Louvre mainly a place for displaying the royal collections including, from 1692 on, a gathering of antique sculpture. Also in 1692, for the next hundred years the building became the home of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (devoted to the humanities) and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (paintings and sculpture); the latter in 1699 initiated a series of salons. 

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be made a public museum, to display the nation’s masterpieces: monuments to science and the arts. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition comprising 537 paintings. Most of the works are confiscated church and royal property. Structural hazards cause the museum to be closed from 1796 until 1801. Under Napoleon the volume of the collection increased, and the museum was renamed the Musée Napoléon. After the defeat at Waterloo, many pieces that had been carried off by Napoleon’s armies were returned to their original owners. The collection expanded further under the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X; and during the Second Empire the museum acquired 20,000 items. After the Third Republic, thanks to donations and bequests the collections kept growing steadily, except during the two World Wars.

Since 2008, the collection has been divided into eight curatorial departments: Decorative Arts; Egyptian Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Near Eastern Antiquities; Paintings; Prints and Drawings; Sculptures.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, popularly known as The Met, is situated on the eastern edge of Central Park on what is locally called Museum Mile. The museum actually consists of two locations: the main site, also often simply referred to as The Met, is one of the world’s largest art galleries; the second one in Upper Manhattan, The Cloisters, is a much smaller building featuring medieval art. The Met is almost 400 m (¼ mile) long and occupies over 190,000 m² (2 million ft²) (2007).

In 1870 a group of American citizens that included merchants and bankers as well as artists and philosophers decided to create a museum so art and art education could become accessible to the American people. Initially located at 681 Fifth Avenue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors to the public on 20 February 1872.

The Met’s permanent collection is divided into seventeen distinct departments, with a specialized staff of curators and scholars for each; supported by four dedicated conservation departments and a department of scientific research. The permanent collection contains over two million works of art. There are items dating back to classical antiquity and ancient Egypt; works by nearly all European masters; and a large collection of American and modern art. In addition the Met maintains substantial collections of African, Asian, Byzantine, Islamic, and Oceanic art, and of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from all over the world. The galleries of the Met also contain permanent installations of remarkable interiors representing period rooms from first century Rome to modern American design.

Aside from permanent exhibitions, a number of special and traveling exhibitions of considerable scale are held throughout the year.

The Vatican Museums (Musei Vaticani) on Viale Vaticano in the Vatican City, in Rome, are among the greatest museums in the world: their immense collections were accumulated over centuries by the Roman Catholic Church and contain pieces of classical sculpture and of Renaissance art that are among the world’s most famous and extraordinary works.

The visitors’ route through the Vatican Museums tours the Stanze della Segnatura (“Raphael’s rooms”) decorated by Raphael, and the Sistine Chapel with work by Michaelangelo, Raphael, and other great artists.

Over five hundred years ago a single piece sculpture led to the founding of the Vatican Museums by Pope Julius II. A marble sculpture of Laocoön – according to Greek mythology, the priest of ancient Troy who vainly argued against accepting the Greek “gift” of a large wooden horse – was unearthed in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on 14 January 1506. Michelangelo and Giuliano da Sangallo, both engaged at the Vatican, were dispatched by Pope Julius II examine the discovery. On their advice, the pope immediately bought the sculpture from the owner of the vineyard. The piece, representing Laocoön and his sons writhing in the grip of a sea serpent, was put on public display in the Belvedere Garden at the Vatican exactly one month after it was found. 

In October 2006 the Vatican Museums celebrated their 500th anniversary by making the excavation of a Vatican Hill necropolis permanently open to the public.

The British Museum in London is a museum of human history and culture. Its collections are among the world’s largest and most comprehensive. Over seven million objects from all over the world document the course of culture from the start down to the present day.

Based mostly on the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, physician and scientist, the British Museum was created in 1753. It was installed in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site where the present museum building still stands, and first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, Over the next 250 years the spread of British colonialism also nurtured the British Museum and generated several daughter institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in South Kensington in 1887, previously known as the British Museum (Natural History). Some items – notably the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece – are the focus of highly passionate debate, with calls for restitution being made. 

The British Library, whose collections had been dispersed around London with part in the British Museum’s Round Reading Room, was moved to a new site in 1997. Prior to that time, the British Museum had been unique in that both a national museum of antiquities and a national library were housed in the same building.

The museum is a non-departmental public body or quango sponsored by the Ministerial Department for Culture, Media and Sport (known as Department of National Heritage in the past). Admission is free, as at all the other national museums in the United Kingdom. The director of the museum has been Neil MacGregor since 2002. In September 2010 Conservative Peer Lord Sainsbury pledged a donation of GBP25 million to the Museum to help fund a large extension. When it is completed the British Museum will be the largest museum in the world by collection size.

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is situated in the 7th arrondissement (district) on the Left Bank of the river Seine. It is housed in a former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, which was commissioned by a railway company, Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de Paris à Orléans; the building was constructed in the Beaux-Arts style from 1898 to 1900 and completed in time to be inaugurated for the Paris world’s fair on 14 July 1900. The impressive structure served as the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939. The architect of the original building was Victor Laloux; in 1979 a team of three architects, Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc, and Jean-Paul Philippon, won the competition to oversee the transformation of the station into a museum, which opened in December 1986.

The Musée d’Orsay contains a sizeable array of works from the decorative arts (e.g. ceramics, glassware, and furniture), photography, and architecture. Above all, however, it is probably best known for its vast collection of Western paintings (over 5000 works) and sculpture from 1848 to 1915. The museum’s highly acclaimed collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by such artists as Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Seurat is the largest in the world. The former Musée (now Galerie nationale) du Jeu de Paume accomodated many of these masterpieces until the Musée d’Orsay was inaugurated.