The World’s 100 Best Museums

A large museum in Mexico City covering anthropology and the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mexico, with halls devoted to Maya, Olmec, Mexica and other cultures. Many rooms open onto outdoor sections, and the modernist building by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez surrounds a central courtyard with a fountain.

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Painting gallery in Madrid with works by Velázquez, Goya, Bosch, Rubens and Titian. The rooms are numbered, the collection takes more than one visit, and photography is forbidden in the galleries.

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A modern art museum on the Øresund coast north of Copenhagen, reached by train and a short walk. Its galleries, glass corridors and sculpture garden connect building, lawn and sea views, with a permanent collection alongside changing exhibitions.

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Art museum in the Winter Palace, the former residence of the Russian tsars, founded on Catherine II's collection in 1764. The palace halls and staircases draw as much attention as the paintings by Leonardo, Rembrandt and Titian.

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Art museum on Vienna's Ringstrasse built for the Habsburg collections, with Old Master paintings, the Kunstkammer and Egyptian rooms. It holds the largest group of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

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Large archaeology museum in central Şanlıurfa tracing the region from the Paleolithic onward along a chronological route. It holds finds from Göbeklitepe and Karahantepe, a walk-in Göbeklitepe replica, and shares its garden with the Haleplibahçe Mosaic Museum.

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History museum in Gdańsk with its main exhibition underground, covering the war from its origins to the aftermath. The exhibition follows civilian lives more than battles, using artifacts, film and dioramas.

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A large World War II museum spread across several interconnected buildings, tracing the war from its origins through the European and Pacific battles. Immersive rooms recreate jungles, ship interiors and rubble, alongside personal stories, restored aircraft and the 4D film Beyond All Boundaries.

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A modern state museum in Patna tracing Bihar's history from the Stone Age to modern times through sculptures, coins, manuscripts and folk art. A spacious building with open courtyards and lawns houses chronological galleries, a children's gallery and a short history film.

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Art museum in New York covering 5,000 years, from Egyptian, Greek and Roman galleries to European paintings and arms and armor. Many visitors spend a full day in two or three wings and leave the rest unseen.

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Natural history museum in Leiden in a new building with a high central hall, arranged by theme floor by floor. The dinosaur hall holds Trix, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, and many displays are built for children.

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Museum of archaeology and Danish history outside Aarhus, in a building with a roof that is open to walk on. Exhibitions set the finds among film, sound and light, and include the Grauballe Man bog body.

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Art museum in Chicago in several connected buildings, with a focus on Impressionist and American painting. Seurat's La Grande Jatte, Van Gogh's Bedroom and self-portrait, American Gothic and Monet's Water Lilies hang here.

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Open-air museum of wooden houses from Orava villages, at the foot of the Roháče mountains with a stream running through it. Craftspeople work and sell in the houses, and farm animals are kept on site.

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Museum of ancient Egypt near the Giza pyramids, opened in November 2025. It shows the full contents of Tutankhamun's tomb together for the first time, and the Great Hall holds a statue of Ramses II.

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Museum of archaeology, Judaica and art in Jerusalem, with finds from excavations across Israel shown from the Stone Age onwards. The Dead Sea Scrolls are kept in a separate building, the Shrine of the Book.

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Natural history museum in a palace-like building in Vienna opened in 1889, with halls of minerals, meteorites, dinosaurs and mounted animals in antique display cases. The Venus of Willendorf is in the prehistory rooms.

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Private collection in Recife shown in brick buildings styled as a medieval castle and set in gardens. It combines European arms and armour with paintings by Frans Post from the Dutch period in Brazil.

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A free military history museum on Vítkov hill in Žižkov, tracing Czech and European warfare from medieval times to the present across seven chronological sections. A reconstructed First World War trench with smoke, light and gunfire effects is the centrepiece, alongside cabinets of touchable objects.

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Technology museum with halls of classic cars, Formula 1 cars, locomotives, aircraft and military vehicles. A Concorde and a Tupolev Tu-144 stand above the roof, and visitors can walk through both.

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Underground museum built inside the reconstructed Great Tumulus at Vergina, holding the royal tombs of Philip II and other Macedonian royals in situ. Dark halls with lit display cases show gold crowns, larnakes, armor and silverwork from the unlooted tombs.

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Museum built around the Vasa, a warship that sank in Stockholm harbour on its first voyage in 1628 and was raised 333 years later. The hull, almost entirely original, is viewed from galleries on several levels.

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Museum of the Moche tombs excavated at Huaca Rajada, holding the gold, silver and shell regalia of the Lord of Sipán. The route starts on the third floor and descends to the tombs, following the order of the excavation.

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Dinosaur museum in Katsuyama in a silver dome designed by Kisho Kurokawa, with dozens of mounted skeletons in the main hall. Several species were found in the region, and an animatronic Tyrannosaurus stands in the hall.

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A museum in Montgomery tracing Black history in the United States from the transatlantic slave trade through lynching and segregation to mass incarceration. Exhibits use video, holograms, sculpture and art, and the ticket also covers other Legacy sites reached by shuttle and boat.

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Private museum of contemporary art in a glass-and-stone building on an estate in Wassenaar. Many works invite visitors to step in or play, and the grounds include a garden by Piet Oudolf, woods and dunes.

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A contemporary art museum spread across a large botanical garden in Minas Gerais, with galleries and open-air works set among lakes and forest. The grounds are big and hilly enough that many visitors rent the paid internal carts and plan a full day or two.

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Art museum in Cleveland with free admission, covering cultures from every continent and periods from antiquity to the present. Galleries are wide and rarely crowded, and an atrium with a café sits at the centre.

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Science museum where most exhibits on physics, the universe and the earth are meant to be touched and operated. A 1,000 square metre Amazon rainforest with large fish, turtles and caimans stands inside the building.

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Car museum in The Hague showing vehicles from carriages and the first automobiles to Formula 1 racers. Each car has a short text in Dutch and English, and a signposted route leads through the floors.

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Art museum in a former royal palace in Paris, with collections from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to European painting. The Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace draw crowds, and queues are long.

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House museum in a villa outside central Florence, holding Frederick Stibbert's collection of European and Japanese arms and armour. The rooms keep their 19th-century furnishings, and few tourists come this far.

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Science and technology museum in Munich with sections on aviation, space, bridges, chemistry, music and robots. Parts are closed for renovation until 2028, among them the mine and the ships.

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Military aviation museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, with hundreds of aircraft in four hangars, from the Wright brothers to spacecraft. Visitors can walk through presidential aircraft, including Kennedy's Air Force One.

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Five-storey museum in central Kuching on the peoples, history and crafts of Sarawak and Borneo. It opened recently, each level has its own theme, and one floor is for children.

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Art museum built into a hill on Naoshima by Tadao Ando, showing works by only a few artists. The concrete rooms are lit by daylight, including one with five Water Lilies paintings by Monet.

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Archaeology museum in Madrid tracing the Iberian Peninsula from prehistory to the 19th century, with Egyptian and Greek rooms as well. The galleries were renovated and run in chronological order.

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Museum on the American paratroopers of D-Day, set in several pavilions beside the church of Sainte-Mère-Église. Visitors board a C-47 with sound and images, and a free tablet adds stories at scan points.

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Archaeology museum in Halle that follows prehistory from the first humans onward across three floors. The Nebra Sky Disc is shown in a darkened room under a starry sky, and the skeleton of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman is here too.

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National museum in a neo-Renaissance building at the top of Wenceslas Square, with natural history, minerals and Czech history. A tunnel links it to the new building, and the dome gives views over Prague.

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Ethnology museum in Expo Commemoration Park near Osaka, showing everyday objects, clothing, instruments and house models from each region of the world. Galleries run from Oceania through the Americas, Africa and Europe to Asia and Japan, with many videos.

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Gallery of Renaissance painting and sculpture in the offices Vasari designed for Cosimo I de' Medici in 1560. Works by Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael hang in rooms off long corridors lined with statues.

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Paleontology museum in Trelew showing dinosaur skeletons and fossils found in Patagonia, arranged in chronological order. It reopened after a renovation with staged lighting, sound and video rooms.

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Museum of old and new art built largely underground beside the river near Hobart, reached by ferry. Galleries are dark and unlabelled, a phone app gives the information, and some works are explicit or disturbing.

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Archaeology museum in two 15th-century Ottoman buildings below Ankara Castle, laid out chronologically from the Paleolithic to the Phrygians and Urartians. It was European Museum of the Year in 1997.

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Museum of musical instruments from every country, arranged by region across two floors in Phoenix. Visitors wear a headset that plays the sound of each display as they approach its screen.

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A free museum in central Edinburgh covering Scottish history, science, technology, natural history and world cultures across two connected buildings. A Victorian glass-roofed hall joins a modern wing, with hands-on areas for children and a rooftop terrace with city views.

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History museum near Nizwa that follows Oman from its geological formation to the present day. Interactive displays, sound and video carry the story, inside a building shaped after the Al Hajar Mountains.

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Art museum in Midtown Detroit with collections from many centuries and cultures, arranged in sequence across three floors. Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals cover the walls of one court; the European paintings include Van Gogh and Rembrandt.

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An art gallery inside the Villa Borghese park, holding the Borghese family collection of sculpture, painting and antiquities. Timed entry limits visitor numbers, and Bernini's marble sculptures share the rooms with paintings by Caravaggio and Raphael under painted ceilings.

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Industry museum in a red-brick former textile factory in Nagoya, tracing Toyota from automatic looms to cars. Staff run the looms and assembly robots in live demonstrations.

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Science and technology museum in the Palace of Fine Arts built for Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Hands-on exhibits fill the halls, and a captured German U-boat from the Second World War has a hall of its own.

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Museum of the Solidarity movement at the former Gdańsk shipyard, in a building shaped like a ship's hull. The exhibition uses films, documents and room reconstructions, and an audio guide leads through it.

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Natural history museum in the park of La Plata, founded in 1888. Its halls hold dinosaur and whale skeletons, mounted animals, insects and rooms on the first peoples of the Americas.

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Art museum in central Zürich with European painting and sculpture from the late Middle Ages to the present, shown in two buildings. Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso hang here alongside a large group of works by Alberto Giacometti.

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Museum of art, design and decorative arts in South Kensington, with fashion, jewellery, ceramics, furniture and sculpture from many countries. The Cast Courts hold full-size reproductions including Michelangelo's David and Trajan's Column.

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Tunisia's national museum, housed in a former palace of the Beys in Tunis. Its Roman mosaics, gathered from sites across the country, cover walls and floors, and some are walked on.

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Museum of modern Japanese painting in Yasugi, known as much for its garden as for its collection. The garden is viewed from inside through windows, and the galleries hold works by Yokoyama Taikan and Kitaoji Rosanjin.

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New Zealand's national museum on the Wellington waterfront covers Māori culture, natural history, war and art across several floors. Interactive displays run throughout, and Wētā Workshop's large figures in the Gallipoli exhibition draw many visitors.

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Gallery on Trafalgar Square holding more than 2,300 European paintings, from early Renaissance works to the Impressionists. Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks and van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait hang in the permanent collection, which is free.

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Archaeological museum in Taranto that follows the region from prehistory through Magna Graecia to Roman times, floor by floor. The Gold of Taranto section draws most attention; labels are in Italian and English.

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Art museum in Madrid's art triangle near the Prado, holding Baron Thyssen's collection of Western painting from the 13th to the 20th century. Its three floors run in chronological order from top to bottom, from Italian primitives to Impressionists, Expressionists and Pop Art.

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War museum in the woods at Overloon on the Second World War in the Netherlands, told through personal stories. A large hall holds tanks, vehicles and aircraft, and a D-Day section simulates the landing.

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Open-air museum in Aarhus built as a town, with streets from the 19th century, 1927, the 1970s and recent decades. Most houses, shops and workshops can be entered, and some are staffed by people in period dress.

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Museum on the 7 million emigrants who left Europe through Bremerhaven, mostly for the USA. Each visitor gets the identity of a real emigrant and follows it through rebuilt quays, ship decks and the Ellis Island waiting room.

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Maritime museum in a former seaplane hangar on the Tallinn seafront. A 1930s submarine stands in the hall and can be entered, and the ticket covers historic ships moored outside, among them the icebreaker Suur Tõll.

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Vatican collections of sculpture, painting and frescoed rooms, ending at the Sistine Chapel. Ceilings, floors and walls are decorated throughout, and the halls are crowded and hot in summer.

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Korea's national museum in Yongsan, Seoul, with three floors running from prehistory through the kingdoms to Asian art. The long building stands behind a pond and a garden of stone pagodas, with Namsan Tower in view.

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Museum of Dutch art and history in Amsterdam, covering 1100 to 1900. Rembrandt's Night Watch, under restoration in view of visitors, and Vermeer's Milkmaid hang among Dutch Golden Age paintings.

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Palaeontology museum in the Alberta badlands, showing dinosaur skeletons and fossils found nearby. A window gives a view of staff preparing bones, and a marked trail starts in front of the building.

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A museum of late 19th- and early 20th-century art set in a former Paris railway station. Its fifth floor holds Impressionist paintings by Van Gogh and Monet beside a giant clock face looking over the city.

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A large indoor museum of American innovation in Dearborn, holding cars, trains, planes, farm machinery, furniture and household objects. Its collection includes historical artifacts such as the Rosa Parks bus, presidential limousines and the chair Lincoln was shot in.

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Art museum inside De Hoge Veluwe National Park, founded on the collection of Helene Kröller-Müller. It holds 88 paintings by Van Gogh, among them Café Terrace at Night, and the park is crossed on free white bicycles.

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Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex beside Dulles Airport, with aircraft and spacecraft too large for the building on the National Mall. Its hangars hold the space shuttle Discovery, an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay and a Concorde.

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A car museum in Stuttgart tracing Mercedes-Benz history from the first automobiles of the 1880s to current models and concept cars. Visitors ride an elevator to the top floor and walk down a spiral through eras set against world events.

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A national archaeology museum in Naples holding finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum, alongside Greek, Roman and Egyptian collections. Many visitors pair it with a trip to Pompeii, since original frescoes, mosaics and statues from the excavations are kept here.

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Fine arts museum in Antwerp, in a 19th-century building reopened in 2022 after a long renovation. Old masters such as Rubens hang beside modern works, grouped by theme instead of by date.

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Natural history museum in Saltillo about the deserts of Coahuila, from geology and dinosaurs to the first human settlements. The route ends at a small zoo with snakes, a bison and other desert animals.

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A large art museum at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, reached by the 72 granite steps from the Rocky films. Its collection spans European impressionists, medieval galleries, arms and armor, period rooms and Asian art across several floors.

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Free art museum on the National Mall with a West Building, an East Building and a sculpture garden, linked by an underground passage. Its collection runs from Renaissance to modern art and includes Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci, with seating in most rooms.

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Art museum in Kansas City with about 35,000 works from ancient to contemporary, including Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso. General admission is free, and the lawn doubles as a sculpture garden with the giant Shuttlecocks.

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Museum in Puebla's old town with galleries of pre-Hispanic artifacts and colonial-era art, plus temporary exhibitions. A rooftop terrace with a café looks over the city's church domes and towers.

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A 1932 Art Deco municipal swimming pool in Roubaix, converted in 2001 into a museum of art and industry. Sculptures line the old pool under glass roofs, water still runs, and the former changing rooms hold ceramics, paintings and textiles.

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A museum of Silesian history and Polish art built on the site of the former Katowice coal mine, with most galleries set underground. A mine shaft serves as an observation tower over the city, while ongoing construction and poor signage make the grounds hard to navigate.

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Art museum in central Copenhagen built around a private collection of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Mesopotamian sculpture, Danish painting and French Impressionists. A glass-domed winter garden with palm trees and a fountain sits at its centre, and a rooftop terrace overlooks the city.

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Museum in Lübeck on the Hanseatic League, told in order from its beginnings to its end. Reconstructed scenes alternate with rooms of text, and a ticket card sets the language at each station; few original objects are shown.

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A large natural history museum in Manhattan with four floors of halls covering dinosaurs, animals, Earth science, space and world cultures. Its fossil halls, habitat dioramas, suspended blue whale model and Hayden Planetarium shows draw most visitors' attention.

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Spanish sculpture from the 13th to 18th centuries, mostly polychrome religious wood carving, in the College of San Gregorio in Valladolid. The carved stone façade and the cloister are part of the visit, as are the altarpieces and a Neapolitan Nativity scene.

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Private museum of Javanese court culture in the hills at Kaliurang, covering the royal houses of Yogyakarta and Solo. Visits run only as guided group tours through dimly lit galleries and forest gardens.

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Private collection of Calouste Gulbenkian, from ancient Egypt to the 20th century, shown in a low modern building in a Lisbon park. Eastern and Western art hang in one sequence of rooms that open onto the gardens.

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A large free museum in London holding artefacts from civilisations across the world, from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece and Rome. Its Great Court sits under a glass roof, and its galleries draw heavy crowds, especially around the Rosetta Stone.

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Personal art collection of a Boston heiress, shown in the Venetian-style palace she built around a planted courtyard. The rooms stay as she arranged them, without labels; 13 works were stolen in 1990.

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Maritime museum in Genoa's old port, tracing navigation from galleys to ocean liners. Full-size ship reconstructions can be boarded, one floor follows Italian emigrants across the Atlantic, and a submarine is moored outside.

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Open-air museum in a large park near Arnhem, with farms, houses, mills and workshops moved from across the Netherlands. Historic trams circle the grounds, and staff in period clothing demonstrate crafts.

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Belgian railway museum at Schaerbeek station, running from the first steam locomotives to present-day trains. François Schuiten staged the halls in near darkness, and several carriages and locomotives can be entered.

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An open-air museum of rural architecture from Warmia, Masuria and former East Prussia, spread over large grounds with cottages, farmsteads, windmills and a church. Most interiors can be entered, and gardens, farm animals and an herbal pump room surround the buildings.

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Art museum opened in 1876 with about 500,000 works from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Asia, Europe and America. One room is given to Monet, within a larger group of Impressionist paintings.

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Collection of motorcycles from 1884 to the present, with Lotus and other race cars, shown on five floors in Leeds, Alabama. The building overlooks a working race track, and a bridge leads out over it.

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History of Indonesian money and banking, shown in the former De Javasche Bank building in Jakarta's old town. The white colonial building has modern rooms inside with film projections, models, wax figures and a coin and banknote collection.

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Museum of Roman sculpture, mosaics, inscriptions and household objects from Augusta Emerita, the Roman city under Mérida. Rafael Moneo's building is a tall nave of red-brick arches lit from above, with a crypt below.

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