The largest museums in the world: interesting facts. The most famous art galleries in the world

  • 09.05.2019

Every year on May 18, the world celebrates International Museum Day. It appeared in 1977, when at the next meeting of the International Council of Museums a proposal was adopted Russian organization on the establishment of this cultural holiday. Since 1978, International Museum Day has been celebrated in more than 150 countries. Today we invite you to familiarize yourself with the 10 best museums in the world.

Louvre. Paris

This is one of the biggest art museums peace. The Louvre was once an ancient castle of the French kings, built by Philip Augustus in 1190. As a museum, it was first opened to visitors on November 8, 1793. The Louvre occupies a space of approximately 195 thousand square meters, has a total exhibition area of ​​60,600 square meters .m. Today the museum's catalog contains 400 thousand exhibits. For convenience, the exhibition is divided into seven large parts: departments applied arts, painting, sculpture and graphics, ancient Egyptian department, department Ancient East And islamic art, as well as a department of art of Greece, Rome and the Etruscan Empire. In general, even a week is not enough to get around everything. Therefore, if you are an ordinary average tourist who has allocated only one day to visit the Louvre, then visit only its main masterpieces, to which special signs lead. Or purposefully come to the painting department - the most impressive - and look at the works of Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Caravaggio, Durer, Goya, Vermeer and many others.

Vatican Museum. Rome

The Vatican Museum is the most big museum world: 1,400 halls, 50,000 objects, and to get around all the exhibits on display you need to walk 7 km. Of course, all visitors first try to get to the Sistine Chapel. However, the structure of the museum is very unique: you can get to the farthest point - the Vatican Pinacoteca - only after passing all the previous ones. So you need to calculate the forces. You should start with the Egyptian Museum, which you just need to walk diagonally. and then run to the famous Belvedere, then to the Stanzas of Raphael. And finally to Sistine Chapel, rightfully called the main local shrine.

British museum. London

The British Museum was founded on June 7, 1753 on the initiative of the government and was officially open to visitors on January 15, 1759. Thousands of people took part in its creation and development. The British Museum is also called the Museum of Stolen Masterpieces or the Museum of All Civilizations. These names are justified. After all, the treasures presented in the museum were not obtained by the most in an honest way. For example, the Rosetta Stone, thanks to which scientists deciphered ancient hieroglyphs, like many ancient Egyptian monuments, was taken from Napoleon's army in Egypt. Similar story happened to the precious sculptural friezes of the Parthenon: the Englishman Lord Elgin took them out of Greece, having obtained written permission from the Turkish government. In the same way, the museum’s collection was replenished with sculptures of the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus and many other works of art. True, the exhibition of paintings in the museum is small - that’s why there are National Gallery.

National Science Museum of Japan. Tokyo

This museum was founded in 1871. Most of its exhibition consists of natural science exhibits: stuffed animals, remains of dinosaurs and their modern models, etc. However, this museum is not only the largest museum in Tokyo and Japan, but also one of the best in the world. The museum has a “forest” hall and its own Botanical Garden, allowing you to evaluate all the wealth flora of our planet. And the huge toothy skeletons floating under the ceiling and appearing from the blue twilight will not leave anyone indifferent. Of course, here you will also find traditionally Japanese exhibits, because the inhabitants of the country Rising Sun very proud of their culture.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY

You've probably heard about Museum Mile, which is located in New York between Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. This is where they are collected best museums USA, the largest of which is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this museum you can find almost everything: from Paleolithic artifacts to pop art. There are also collections of art from Africa and Oceania, the Middle East and Egypt, which can safely be called a rarity. Here you will find a special room containing clothing worn by residents of all five continents over seven centuries. There is also an exhibition of art and architecture. medieval Europe, painting of the 12th - 19th centuries, as well as musical instruments from different countries. However, the main place here is still given American art.

Prado Museum. Madrid

Madrid can safely boast of having one of the largest museums European fine arts. It was founded in 1819. However, the building continued to be completed until 1830. If we recall the history of Spain, for several centuries art in the country developed under the patronage of the church and the elite. This explains the appearance of most of the museum’s exhibition, which was collected by the royal family and the church. Here you will find paintings widely famous Raphael and the brilliant Hieronymus Bosch. Philip II loved the latter very much: the artist’s peculiar imagination was able to fascinate the monarch so much that he even placed several paintings on the walls of his own bedroom.

Guggenheim Museum. Bilbao

This museum is located in the city of Bilbao, in northern Spain. It is just one of the branches of the museum contemporary art Solomon Guggenheim, located in the USA and the most striking of them, is recognized as the most outstanding architectural project in the world. The museum has thematic halls: the hall of surrealism, which presents Dali, Magritte, Delvaux and Tanguy, the hall of cubism, crowned with masterpieces by Picasso, Léger and Chagall, the hall of futurism and abstractionism - Braque, Kandinsky. Its collection also includes works by Andy Warhol, Fernand Leger, Kandinsky and others. And here you can see the collection of one of the most significant and extravagant collectors avant-garde art- Peggy Guggenheim.

State Hermitage Museum. Saint Petersburg

State Hermitage Museum is the largest art and cultural-historical museum not only in Russia, but throughout the world. It owes its origins to the private collection of the Russian Empress Catherine II. When the collection was already large enough, the Hermitage was formed and in 1852 it was opened to visitors, being at that time the Imperial Museum. However, the founding date of the museum is considered to be 1764, because it was then that the Empress acquired a large collection Western European painting. Today the museum has more than three million works of art and monuments of world culture. Its structure is quite complicated. It is a complex complex: six majestic buildings, led by the well-known Winter Palace, which occupies the main exhibition of the museum, are located along the embankment of the Neva River.

State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow

The State Tretyakov Gallery is one of the most significant collections of Russian fine art on a global scale. Russians owe the presence of such a rich gallery to the merchant Pavel Tretyakov, because it was with his collection of works of Russian art - the largest in the world - that the history of the gallery began. The Tretyakov Gallery is famous for its exhibition in the engineering building Russian painting of the 11th - early 20th centuries, which is part of the All-Russian Museum Association State Tretyakov Gallery, formed already in 1986. It also includes: Exhibition Hall in Tomachi, House-Museum of P.D. Korina and the House-Museum of V.M. Vasnetsov, A.M. Apartment Museum Vasnetsov and the Museum-Workshop of the sculptor A.S. Golubkina.

Rijksmuseum. Amsterdam

Rijksmuseum - main state museum Holland. It is housed in a huge ancient neo-Gothic palace with Burgundian towers and sculptural reliefs, which was built back in 1885. Its main exhibition is dedicated to the great Dutch artists of the 15th-17th centuries. Among them you will find such world names as Rembrandt, Vermeer and de Hooch. The size of the museum is impressive and you can’t get around it in one day, because the Rijksmuseum has 200 halls. However, you can quickly see the main exhibitions, starting with the main exhibit - the famous work of art by Rembrandt's hands The Night Watch. He is given a place of honor in the Gallery of Fame. And at the end of the museum marathon, you can go to the Museumplein - a huge lawn square with a wonderful view of the Museum Quarter.

Today there are more than 100,000 museums around the world, each of which is unique in its own way. However, there are the most famous museums the world, which all people interested in culture and art, traveling to many countries of the world, strive to visit. We bring to your attention ten of the most famous museums in the world, which represent very interesting places, revealing the secrets of history, and are also world-class attractions.

Louvre (Paris)

This French museum, according to experts, occupies a leading position among the most famous museums in the world. Its opening took place in 1793. Until that time, the museum building was a fortress that served as a residence for the kings of France. The Louvre is also one of the largest among art museums - the area occupied by the museum is 195,000 m2, of which 60,600 m2 are allocated for exhibition.

When you first visit the museum, you may get the impression of some confusion, but the organization of the exhibition is quite rational, so there is no difficulty in understanding it. To see the wonderful paintings housed in the museum, even a couple of days is unlikely to be enough, because the museum’s catalog currently contains 400,000 exhibits. For the convenience of visitors, the exhibition is divided into 7 large sections; exhibits can be found using special signs. Tourists find the local painting department incredibly impressive, where you can admire the works of Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Caravaggio, and here you can also see mysterious smile"Mona Lisa" created by Leonardo da Vinci.

Hermitage (St. Petersburg)


This museum, created in 1764, is a real treasure of Russia. It features the world's largest collection of paintings and archaeological finds. On this moment The Hermitage has almost 3,000,000 exhibits. The museum owes such an incredibly large collection to the personal collection of Empress Catherine. It covers history from the Stone Age to the present. Everyone who visits the Hermitage definitely strives to go to the Golden Room, where amazing gems. The Hermitage today consists of 5 majestic buildings (the main one is the Winter Palace), located near the Neva embankment.

British Museum (London)


First opening its doors in 1753, it is undoubtedly considered one of the most famous museums in the world. In terms of area, it occupies an area that can be compared with 9 football fields. It features the largest collection of exhibits in the world.

The works of art collected here were brought from all continents of the world. Thousands of people were involved in the creation and development of this museum. The galleries here are dedicated to Greece, Egypt, the civilization of Rome, Africa, Asia and Europe of the Middle Ages. Every year 6,000,000 visitors come here to look at the museum’s exhibits. The British Museum also has other names - “Museum of Stolen Masterpieces” or “Museum of All Civilizations”, but both names are absolutely justified.

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)


New York's premier museum, founded in 1870, is one of the most famous in the world. During its existence this museum has already changed its location twice, but now its location remains the same - it is in Central Park, on Fifth Avenue. There are over 2,000,000 exhibits brought to the museum from all over the world - here you can see Islamic and European paintings, a large collection of weapons. The most popular room here is the American one. decorative arts. In the main hall, art connoisseurs can contemplate the works of Raphael, Tintoretto, and Botticelli.

Uffizi Gallery (Florence)


This gallery among art museums is recognized as one of the most famous in the world. It is named after the Uffizi Square, where it is located. For those who admire the works of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, this place will be very interesting, because their creations are quite widely represented here. Also in this gallery is the painting “The Birth of Venus”, which was created by Botticelli.

Egyptian Museum (Cairo)


Considered the largest museum presenting art Ancient Egypt. It is here that you can see a huge number of exhibits (over 120,000 specimens) dating back to the prehistoric period. The first time exhibits were exhibited in this place was in 1835. It was then that the Egyptian government made attempts to stop the looting of archaeological monuments and decided to put the people's property on public display. The museum building was built already in 1900.


Recognized as the largest in the world. Its exhibition includes 50,000 exhibits, which are housed in many halls. The number of halls here is 1400. To get around them all, you need to walk at least 7000 meters. This place houses 22 collections that allow you to enjoy the creations of the Etruscans and Egyptians, as well as objects of modern art. Some of the main places of the museum are the Raphael Room and the Sistine Chapel, considered the shrine of the museum territory.

Prado Museum (Madrid)


Despite the fact that this museum has not collected such an impressive collection of works of fine art, its attendance is very high. Visitors are attracted here by the works of Goya, Murillo, and Velazquez. Particular attention is always paid to Rubens' "The Three Graces". The main specialization of the museum is paintings, but a special place is also given to coins, medals and decorative objects.


Located near the central part of Amsterdam. When visiting the capital of the Netherlands, guests are sure to try to visit this one of the most famous museums peace. On one side of the museum there is a panoramic square, and on the other side it overlooks the city’s water canals. The museum's exhibition includes works by great Dutch artists, including you can see masterpieces by Rembrandt.

Athens National Museum of Archeology


It is the largest museum in Greece. It's worth a visit to learn about the history. ancient Greece. Items from all over Greece that were found during archaeological research are collected here.

Hello, dear guys! And to you, dear adults, a big and warm greeting too!

Probably each of you has been to a museum at least once. Every day around the world, thousands of tourists line up in long lines to see works of science and art, visit various exhibitions and then exchange their impressions of what they saw.

Many of the cultural attractions are famous throughout the planet. Do you know those - those where any traveler would like to go?

I suggest you remember the most famous museums in the world, scattered across different countries, so that when you get ready for a long journey, you can plan a visit to them in your excursion program. Well, right now, so that you can talk about them in an interesting and exciting way in class.

So, the top ten most famous of the famous, according to the ShkolaLa blog.

Lesson plan:

Paris Louvre

Once a medieval fortress and then home to French kings, it opened to visitors in 1793. 160106 square meters occupied total area, more than 400 thousand exhibits on display - all this is about the great and fascinating Louvre!

Its centrally located glass pyramid attracts around 9.5 million visitors each year and is photographed as one of the symbols of Paris. This is the place where one of the world's artistic mysteries is located - Da Vinci's painting "Mona Lisa".

Today the Louvre has seven huge departments, in which you can, as they say, examine the exhibits in detail in only a week, no less. Here are present:

  • department of applied arts;
  • halls of painting, graphics and sculpture;
  • art of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient East;
  • Islamic and Greek departments;
  • Roman hall;
  • and the culture of the Etruscan Empire.

Vatican Museums in Rome

IN exhibition complex There are 1,400 halls and 50,000 objects are located in them. Be prepared to walk about 7 kilometers to see all the exhibits on display.

The heart of the Vatican Museum is considered to be the Sistine Chapel, a Renaissance monument whose walls were painted by Michelangelo. You can reach it only by going through the entire museum corridor.

They began to build the Italian museum back in the 4th century - then the first stones of St. Peter's Church were laid, only in the 9th century the walls appeared, and by the 13th century they were built into the papal Vatican residence. Every year, about 5 million visitors come here to see with their own eyes the treasures collected by Roman Catholics over several centuries.

British Museum London

Opened in 1759 exhibition center quite a complicated story, but the characterization contains dark spots. It is called not only a museum of all civilizations, but also a repository of stolen masterpieces.

This is a place where cultural objects from Egypt, Greece, Rome, Asia and Africa, as well as medieval Europe, are found. But many of the 8 million exhibits appeared in the British Museum through dishonest means. Thus, the ancient Egyptian Rosetta Stone, as well as some other treasures from Egypt, came here after being taken from Napoleon’s army.

From Greece, with the strange permission of the Turkish ruler, precious sculptural exhibitions were taken to London.

By the way, entry to the British Museum is absolutely free.

Japanese National Museum in Tokyo

Dedicated to nature and science, it is distinguished by the fact that, along with the wonders of technology, it contains stuffed animals, found remains of dinosaurs and their models.

Here, on the roof of a six-story building, you will find a botanical garden with sun umbrellas that automatically open when you approach. There is a “forest hall” where you can wander among the rich flora.

In the global gallery you can follow the evolution of all life on Earth and get acquainted with modern technologies, and in Japanese find out historical facts about the land of the rising sun.

This museum is also on the list of famous places because visitors can become scientists for a moment and personally conduct a series of experiments.

American Metropolitan

This museum is located in New York and is rightfully one of the most famous. Judge for yourself: artifacts from the Paleolithic era are collected here, which side by side with modern exhibits from the field of pop art, there are cultural objects from Africa, the East and Europe, paintings from the 12th to the 19th centuries, musical instruments, weapons and clothing of the peoples of five continents.

The museum appeared thanks to a group of entrepreneurs, public figures and artists who donated their collections to him, and they were replenished with two million exhibition items. Overall, there is a lot to see here!

The American Cultural Heritage Plaza is divided by luxurious passages and staircases that unite buildings from different times with tall columns, fountains and stained glass windows. Moreover, its name has nothing to do with underground transport, but is derived from the word “metropolis”, that is, “big city”.

Madrid Prado Museum

Spanish Cultural Center painting collected under one roof more than 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 8,000 drawings, 1,300 objects of art. It got its name thanks to the park of the same name in which it is located.

Although there are no elegant interiors and gilded staircases here, the museum contains a collection of great amount collections of paintings from different European schools: Spanish, Italian, German, British, most of from which was collected by the church and representatives of the royal family.

By the way, there is a copy of the “Mona Lisa” located in the Louvre, painted by a student of Leonardo da Vinci.

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

The main state museum of Holland is located in an ancient palace with towers and relief sculptures and is divided into 200 halls, where many masterpieces of Dutch and world art are located. The red brick building stands on the canal embankment and stretches for an entire block.

The main masterpiece of the Amsterdam museum is Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch".

There are also canvases by artists from the Golden Age. And also exhibition halls are replete with various antique items from antique furniture to porcelain dishes.

St. Petersburg Hermitage

Russia can also rightfully be included in the list and boast of a museum property known throughout the world. The Russian cultural giant is famous for the world's largest collection of paintings. Here you can get acquainted with history from the Stone Age to the present, and the Golden Room is a separate story, because jewelry is collected there Russian Empire and not only!

The Hermitage originates from the collection of Empress Catherine II and, having subsequently expanded, today represents a museum complex of six buildings, where more than 3 million exhibits are presented.

Cairo Museum

This cultural object was until recently known for its complete collection Egyptian art, which contains thousands of treasures from the tombs of Tutankhamun.

Before the revolution in Egypt, the Cairo museum had more than 120,000 ancient exhibits, including monumental sculptures Sphinx ancient period, tombs and mummies of Egyptian pharaohs, jewelry of queens.

We can only hope that the Egyptian nation will be able to preserve its wealth.

Archaeological Museum in Athens

This is the largest cultural center in Greece, which houses exhibits from different eras, but the collections of ceramics and sculpture are among the richest in the world.

The museum's diverse collections include finds dating back to 6800 BC, including clay, stone and bone vessels, weapons, jewelry and tools.

Various museum attractions

Today we have compiled a list of ten famous museums in the world located in different countries, which are on everyone's lips. But there are also museums in the world that few people know about, but which would be worth finding out about, because they are very unusual. The video below shows some of them.


I hope the information presented in this article will help you in developing your research projects.

Good luck with your studies!

Evgenia Klimkovich.

Tourists and travelers, while in a particular country, try to visit the most significant museums. So in St. Petersburg it is the Hermitage, in London it is the British Museum, and in the capital of France it is the Louvre.

The most famous museum in London

The British Museum is recognized as the most famous museum in London. Its foundation was initiated by the government in the mid-eighteenth century. Just six years after the idea and initiative was expressed, the museum invited its first visitors. Thousands of people were involved in its creation and development.

The British Museum has two more names, the first is the Museum of Stolen Masterpieces, the second is the Museum of All Civilizations. All names are quite justified. Most of the treasures presented there were not obtained entirely. in an honest way. Thus, the Rosetta Stone, which helped in deciphering ancient hieroglyphs, was taken along with other ancient Egyptian monuments from Napoleon’s army.

Similar story happened with the sculptural friezes of the Parthenon - they were taken from Greece by written order of the Turkish government by a certain English lord. In a similar way, the collection of this museum was replenished with sculptures of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and sculptures of the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, and a number of other works of art. It should be noted that the exhibition of the British Museum itself is not very large. In terms of the size of the exhibition, the National Gallery is in first place in London.

The most famous museums in Russia

The most famous museums in Russia are the Tretyakov Gallery, located in the capital of Russia, and the world-famous Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The Hermitage is considered one of the largest cultural and historical museums in the world. It owes its origins to the personal collection of Catherine II. This museum was formed and opened to visitors in the mid-nineteenth century. The date of its foundation is considered to be 1764, when the empress acquired huge collection Western European painting. Today, this museum is represented by almost three million works of art and monuments of world culture. The Hermitage is represented by several majestic buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace. All these buildings are located near the embankment of the Neva River.


The world's largest collection of Russian fine art is presented Tretyakov Gallery. This collection is recognized as the most significant on a global scale, for which Russians should be grateful to the merchant Pavel Tretyakov. The history of the gallery began with his personal and already largest collection at that time, composed of works of Russian art.

Vatican Museum

The Vatican Museum is recognized as the largest museum in the world. Its exposition consists of fifty thousand objects presented in halls, the number of which is one thousand four hundred. In order to simply walk around all these halls, you need to walk about seven kilometers.


The first place that almost all visitors strive to get to is the Sistine Chapel. The structure of the museum is such that in order to get to the Vatican Pinacoteca, which is one of the farthest halls, visitors must go through all the previous halls. Naturally, it is impossible to explore a significant part of the museum even in a day. To have time to see all the most interesting things, you can start from the Egyptian Museum, then go to the famous Belvedere, and then to the Stanzas of Raphael and the Sistine Chapel. It is the chapel that is called the main shrine of the museum.


It is known that construction of the Vatican began in the fourth century, when the Church of St. Peter and the residence of the high priest were founded. In the ninth century, fortress walls appeared, and in the thirteenth century a vast new papal monastery was built.


Despite the small territory owned by the Vatican, fabulous treasures are concentrated there. They accumulated gradually, but over the years the collection became so huge that it became necessary to create several museums.

The Louvre is the most famous museum in the world

Among the art museums in the world, the Louvre is the largest. Every tourist visiting Paris tries to get to the Louvre. At one time it was a castle of the French kings, which was built in 1190 by Philip Augustus. It became a museum only in 1793 and then opened to visitors. The area occupied by the Louvre is one hundred and ninety-five thousand square meters. The area occupied by the exhibition is sixty thousand six hundred square meters. The Louvre collection includes about 400 thousand exhibits

The most impressive is the painting department. Arriving there, you can see works by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Rubens, Goya, Vermeer and Titian. By the way, according to the site, it is in the Louvre that the most mysterious and famous painting in the world, “Mona Lisa,” is located.
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Today, there are about one hundred thousand museums all over the world, and this figure is not exact, since new ones are periodically opened and existing ones are developed. In every corner of the world, even the smallest populated areas, there are local history or other museums dedicated to one or another topic. The most big museums everything in the world is known: in some it is collected maximum quantity exhibits, while others amaze with their scope and area.

Largest museums of fine art

If we take European fine art, then one of the largest collections is collected in Uffizi galleries in Italy. The gallery is located in the Florence Palace from 1560 and consists of paintings by the most famous creators of the world: Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Lippi and Botticelli.


One of the largest fine art museums is no less famous. The foundation of the museum dates back to the end of the 18th century, when it was decided to make the royal collection a property and heritage of culture, to give everyone the opportunity to look at it. Complete collections works by Bosch, Goya, El Greco and Velazquez are kept there.


Among the largest museums, it is definitely worth noting Museum fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin in Moscow. There are priceless collections of works by French impressionists and collections of Western European paintings.


The largest art museums in the world

The most famous among the largest artistic works is rightfully considered Hermitage. Museum complex of five buildings housing exhibits from the times stone period and until the 20th century. Initially it was only private collection Catherine II, consisting of works by Dutch and Flemish artists.


One of the largest art museums is Subway in New York. Its founders were several businessmen who revered art and knew a lot about it. Initially, the basis was made up of three private collections, then the exhibition began to grow rapidly. Today, the main support for the museum is provided by sponsors; the state practically does not take part in the development. The amazing thing is that you can get to one of the largest museums in the world for nominal fee, even just ask for a ticket at the ticket office without money.


Among the largest museums in the world, both in terms of the number of exhibits and the space occupied, Gugun in China and Cairo Egyptian Museums. Gugun is a huge architectural and museum complex, which is approximately three times larger than the Moscow Kremlin. Each of the museums has its own special history and is worthy of the attention of tourists.