One may justly describe all of Rome as a great museum, with every side street leading to another exhibit (and some streets exhibits in themselves). Of what is indoors or under glass, however, the treasures accumulated by the See of Rome are the most varied and spectacular. Located in nearly 5 miles of rooms and [...]

If the British Museum sits at one end of the table, the
mighty Louvre gazes back from the other. French acquisitions spanning more than 1,000 years—including the stockpiles of such acquisitive types as Louis XIV and Napoleon—fill three sprawling, multi-story wings with some 300,000 objets d’art. Any one of the Louvre’s sixteen topical sections (Renaissance Sculptures, [...]

Like Brussels, Munich offers a pair of very good museums which add up to a great one. The Alte ("Old") Pinakothek—a remarkable 19th-century survivor worth a view in itself—offers an important group of paintings dating to the early Renaissance, with particular attention to rare German works.
The Neue Pinakothek, also originally built in the 19th [...]

For Old Masters, this is one of Europe’s premier showcases. A bronze Pallas Athene, perched above the 19th-century building’s great dome, presides over a fabulous collection of Vermeers, Holbeins, Bellinis, Corregios, and many others, plus unmatched exhibits of Rubens and Breughel the Elder, each of whom has a dedicated room.. The Sculpture and Applied Arts [...]