Collections and permanent exhibitions
Museums
A museum is a machine for slowing people down. These are the ones that still manage it, plus the hours at which they work best.
The great collections were assembled by empires, by industrialists with a conscience and by states that decided art belonged to everyone. What they share is scale that defeats a single visit, which is why every entry in this section names one room to prioritise and one hour at which the building empties.
The rule that saves the most time: go in the last two hours before closing rather than the first two after opening. Tour groups work mornings, school parties leave by three, and late openings on Thursday and Friday evenings turn a scrum into a walk.
Paris
MuseumBook aheadParis · 1st arrondissement
Musée du Louvre
A royal palace turned into the first public museum of the republic, and the most visited on earth
MuseumParis · 7th arrondissement
Musée d'Orsay
A Beaux-Arts railway station holding the world's best collection of impressionism
MuseumParis · Tuileries
Musée de l'Orangerie
Two oval rooms built to Monet's specification to hold the Water Lilies
Vienna
MuseumIconVienna · Ringstrasse
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Habsburg collection in a purpose-built palace, with the largest group of Bruegels in the world
MuseumVienna · Innere Stadt
Albertina
A Habsburg palace holding a million prints and drawings, including the hare
MuseumVienna · MuseumsQuartier
Leopold Museum
One ophthalmologist's obsession with Schiele, now the largest collection of him anywhere
Amsterdam
MuseumBook aheadAmsterdam · Museumplein
Rijksmuseum
The Dutch Golden Age in a cathedral of a building, with a cycle path running through the middle
MuseumBook aheadAmsterdam · Museumplein
Van Gogh Museum
Two hundred paintings and five hundred drawings, kept together by the family and given to the state
MuseumAmsterdam · Museumplein
Stedelijk Museum
Everything after 1870, in a nineteenth-century building with a white bathtub attached
Barcelona
MuseumIconBarcelona · Montjuïc
Fundació Joan Miró
A white museum on a hill, designed by the artist's friend to hold his own gift to the city
MuseumFree hoursBarcelona · Montjuïc
MNAC
Romanesque church frescoes lifted whole from the Pyrenees into a palace above the city
MuseumBarcelona · Raval
MACBA
Richard Meier's white gallery, with the most famous skate plaza in the world outside it
Venice
MuseumVenice · Dorsoduro
Punta della Dogana
The old customs house at the tip of the island, stripped back by Tadao Ando
MuseumVenice · Dorsoduro
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
An unfinished palace on the Grand Canal, holding the collection she assembled in one extraordinary decade
MuseumVenice · Dorsoduro
Gallerie dell'Accademia
Venetian painting from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, in the school that trained it
Milan
MuseumMilan · Brera
Pinacoteca di Brera
Napoleon's art seizures, hung above a working art academy
MuseumMilan · Largo Isarco
Fondazione Prada
A 1910 gin distillery turned into a campus, with one tower covered in gold leaf
MuseumMilan · Piazza del Duomo
Museo del Novecento
Italian twentieth-century art in a fascist-era palace, with a window onto the cathedral
Los Angeles
MuseumFreeLos Angeles · Brentwood
The Getty Center
A travertine acropolis above the freeway, free to enter, reached by its own tram
MuseumFreeLos Angeles · Downtown
The Broad
A honeycomb veil over a concrete vault, holding two thousand works, free to enter
MuseumLos Angeles · Miracle Mile
LACMA
The largest museum in the western United States, with a field of street lamps out front
Mexico City
MuseumIconMexico City · Chapultepec
Museo Nacional de Antropología
A concrete umbrella over a courtyard, and the greatest pre-Columbian collection in existence
MuseumBook aheadMexico City · Coyoacán
Museo Frida Kahlo
The blue house where she was born, lived, painted and died
MuseumFree daysMexico City · Chapultepec
Museo Tamayo
A painter's own museum, folded into the park like a set of concrete terraces
Copenhagen
MuseumIconCopenhagen · Humlebæk
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
A low modernist museum threaded through a sculpture park above the sound to Sweden
MuseumFree daysCopenhagen · Indre By
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
A brewer's collection of antiquity and French sculpture around a palm-filled winter garden
MuseumCopenhagen · Ishøj
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art
A deconstructivist ship run aground on a beach twenty minutes south of the city
Seoul
MuseumFreeSeoul · Yongsan
National Museum of Korea
Free, enormous, and holding the gold crowns of the Silla kingdom
MuseumFreeSeoul · Hannam
Leeum Museum of Art
Three buildings by three architects, holding traditional and contemporary Korean art side by side
MuseumFree hoursSeoul · Samcheong
MMCA Seoul
The national contemporary museum, built low inside a palace compound
Other kinds
The rest of the guide
Galleries
Contemporary art, kunsthalles and project spaces
10 venuesOpera and Ballet
Opera houses and ballet stages
11 venuesConcert Halls
Classical, philharmonic and recital rooms
12 venuesTheatres
Drama, musicals and the fringe
9 venuesLive Rooms and Clubs
Jazz cellars, live houses and dance floors
15 venuesArenas and Big Shows
Stadiums, arenas and amphitheatres
2 venuesCulture Landmarks
Buildings, campuses and sites that are the exhibition
13 venues