The Best Museums in Europe

Painting collections

The large painting museums on this page grew from royal and state collections: the Prado in Madrid, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Most of them sell timed tickets, and the queues at the Louvre and the Vatican Museums are long even with a booking. The Galleria Borghese in Rome admits visitors in two-hour slots that sell out weeks ahead. The British Museum, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh are free.

Archaeology where it was found

Several museums show finds close to the place they came from. The Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai at Vergina is built inside the burial mound of the Macedonian kings. The State Museum of Prehistory in Halle keeps the Nebra Sky Disc, the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano in Mérida stands over the Roman city of Augusta Emerita, the museum in Taranto shows the gold of the Greek colony, and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples holds the frescoes, mosaics and statues taken from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Cars, aircraft and ships

Eight of the European entries are technology museums. Technik Museum Sinsheim has a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu-144 above its roof. The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart is walked from the top floor down a spiral, from the first automobiles of the 1880s to today, and the Louwman Museum in The Hague also starts with the earliest cars. Ships are the subject in Stockholm, at Lennusadam in a seaplane hangar on the Tallinn seafront, and at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa. Train World in Brussels covers rail.

The Second World War and after

The Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk has its main exhibition underground and follows civilian lives more than battles. In the same city the European Solidarity Centre, at the former shipyard, tells the story of the Solidarity movement. The Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mère-Église is about the American paratroopers of D-Day, the Overloon War Museum tells the war in the Netherlands, and the Army Museum Žižkov in Prague covers Czech military history from the Middle Ages on.