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National Gallery

This list of the most visited museums in the world, comes with pictures, and will give you plenty of ideas for top museums to see on your own travels. For some, &quot;the most popular&quot; means &quot;the best,&quot; and these are definitely some of the most famous museums anywhere. The top museums in the world are often major tourist attractions, and can be a museum of natural history, art, science, or be dedicated to any number of other topics. Early museums were collections owned by private individuals. Whether these collections were open to the public was up to the owner. Today, museums are institutions dedicated to the study and exhibition of art, artifacts, and other objects of importance. One can only imagine the collections necessary to make the museums on this list some of the best museums in the world.What are the greatest museums in the world? This list contains the top 50 famous museums around the world from many different countries, so there won't be a shortage of famous places on this list.&nbsp;Check out more lists like<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/top-100-most-visited-art-museums-in-2010/nychick"> famous art museums</a>, the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-museums-in-the-united-states/nychick">top museums to visit in the US</a> and the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-children_s-museums-in-the-world">most engaging children's museums</a>.

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art

A list of the most visited museums in the United States, with pictures. For some, &quot;the most popular&quot; means &quot;the best&quot;, and these are definitely some of the most famous American museums. Top museums are often major tourist attractions, and can be a museum of natural history, art, science, or many others. Early museums were collections owned by private individuals. Whether these collections were open to the public was up to the owner. Today, museums are institutions dedicated to the study and exhibition of art, artifacts, and other objects of importance. One can only imagine the collections necessary to make the museums on this list some of the most popular in the world.What are the <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/u-s-cities-with-the-best-museums-07/travelgrrl?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">best museums in the US</a>? Included on this list are museums of art - both classical and modern, natural history, and children's museums. These institutions document and display the national heritage of the US through art, fossils, historical letters and papers, and other relics of USA culture and world history.To vote on more American travel sites, check out this list of the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-u-s-cities-for-vacations">best US cities for vacations</a>.

Travel

Philadelphia Museum of Art

A list of the best museums in the United States that focus predominantly on art (paintings, sculpture, glass/porcelain/ceramics, and other visual media) voted on by the Ranker community.&nbsp;&nbsp;When voting, consider the comprehensiveness of a collection if it's an encyclopedic museum such as the Art Institute in Chicago or the comprehensiveness of the period it represents such as the Museum of Modern Art.&nbsp; If you feel you can judge the quality of a museum's collection, the museum's effectiveness in helping visitors understand what they're seeing, or other aspects that make that museum worthwhile, please do!For the sake of maintaining the legitimacy of this list, please do not campaign vote. Museums that have clearly benefitted from campaign voting may be removed.&nbsp;---Information on holdings and size of collections (when available) is from Wikipedia, ArtCom, or the museum websites.If you have a suggestion for a museum not listed here that deserves national recognition, please leave a comment requesting inclusion. &nbsp;Thank you!You may also like these lists, votable except where noted:<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/archictecture-most-beautiful-cathedrals-and-churches-and-europe/admiralcrunch">Most Beautiful Churches &amp; Cathedrals Europe:&nbsp;</a><a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/architecture-most-beautiful-churches-and-temples-n-america/admiralcrunch">Most Beautiful Churches &amp; Cathedrals: USA &amp; Canada</a><a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/architecture-most-beautiful-churches-latin-am-and-caribbean/admiralcrunch">Most Beautiful Churches &amp; Cathedrals: Latin America</a><a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/best-american-flower-gardens-and-botanical-gardens/admiralcrunch">Best American Flower Gardens/Botanical Gardens</a><a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/largest-u-s-cities-without-_fill-in-the-blank_/admiralcrunch">Major U.S. Cities Missing Something Major</a> (Which is the largest U.S. without a museum? Without a skyscraper? Major league sports?)<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/highest-rated-cruise-lines/admiralcrunch">Highest Rated Cruise Lines</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hoover Dam

The best tourist attractions in America are the most loved and most visited places to see in the United States. Visited by millions each year, these American tourist attractions let visitors learn about American history, experience natural landmarks, and let loose at theme parks or shopping centers. If you and the family are looking to see or experience the best things America has to offer, these fascinating and sometimes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/bizarre-roadside-attractions/samantha-dillinger" target="_blank">weird tourist attractions</a> should be on your must-visit list.

In terms of popularity, New York City&#39;s Times Square is the <a href="/list/top-25-most-visited-tourist-destinations-in-america/places-to-go" target="_blank">most visited American tourist destination</a>, with the Manhattan district, full of lights, megastores, historic theaters and street performers, welcoming more than 40 million visitors each year. The Walt Disney parks in Florida and California, the Last Vegas Strip, the National Mall in Washington, DC, and the Mall of America in Minnesota are also among the most visited tourist attractions based on annual tourism figures.

Besides the most popular man-made US tourist destinations, there are numerous natural wonders that attract millions of visitors each year too. Spread across the country, natural attractions that have become <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/scary-facts-about-popular-tourist-attractions/patrick-thornton" target="_blank">favorites for travelers</a>&nbsp;stretch from the Grand Canyon in the West down to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, up to Niagara Falls in New York and out East to Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

So whether you&#39;re looking to relax in the great outdoors at Yosemite National Park, learn about American history at the Lincoln Memorial, or get some thrills at Universal Studios, these best American tourist attractions have a little bit of something for everyone. And they&#39;re not just the best in the country, these are among the <a href="/list/world-famous-tourist-attraction/synsa" target="_blank">top world-famous tourist attractions</a> too.

People love roadside attractions and theme parks, and why wouldn&#39;t they?&nbsp;There&#39;s the anticipation, the expectation, the excitement, the good old fashioned road trip fun! Today, visiting attractions in Orlando, California, and anywhere in between is nothing short of non-stop thrills. While you&#39;re there, no place on earth seems so full of life.&nbsp;But what of the shuttered theme parks and weird roadside attractions of bygone eras? 

Time has passed by many roadside stops.&nbsp;Some travelers might find such sites creepy as they stand stand frozen in time. Dead roads leading to decaying structures and&nbsp;abandoned buildings crumbling in ruins.&nbsp;It doesn&#39;t take long for nature to overtake places that have been left exposed to the elements. Soon, the only visitors to these sightseeing stops are tourists seeking the strange, weird, and maybe ghosts.&nbsp;There&#39;s just something about looking at old abandoned tourist traps and deserted roadside oddities. Once&nbsp;symbols of the great American <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/all-road-movies-or-list-of-road-movies/all-genre-movies-lists?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword" target="_blank">road trip</a>,&nbsp;they now appear only as haunted, desolate, or just weird slices of retired Americana. From dinosaur statues to a bunch of giant busts of American Presidents, there are plenty of creepy abandoned sites to see. 

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Cities / Towns

Santa Fe

This list contains information about the cities in the U.S. with the Best Museums. Several of the <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-museums-in-the-world?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">best museums in the world</a> can be found in the United States. Some of these museums are all about art, while others prioritize science. Several U.S. cities even have world-class children's museums for their residents, and tourists, to enjoy.Which U.S. city has the best museums? Washington, D.C. tops our list. Some of the great museums that can be found in Washington, D.C. include the Smithsonian Institute, the National Air and Space Museum and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Other cities with fantastic museums include Chicago, New York and Honolulu.Which U.S. city is your favorite for checking out museums? Share your thoughts in the comments section.There's <a href="http://www.ranker.com/lists/museums">top ten museums</a> in every genre on this list. Source: Travelandleisure.com / CNN Headline News poll of 60,000 Americans, 2007. http://www.infoplease.com/us/cities/best-museums.html

Attractions

COSI Columbus

This is a crowd-ranked list of the best museums made for kids across the world. &nbsp;This list of the top children&#39;s museums is based on architectural creativity, interactivity, and just plain fun. If you want a place to take your kid that allows them to engage in their environment and learn how to interact easily with new knowledge concepts and expand their horizons,&nbsp;check out some of the best children&#39;s museums in the world.&nbsp;If you&#39;ve been to most of these places, then re-rank and make your own list of the top children&#39;s museums and rank as you see fit, or, if you see something missing, add a museum for kids.&nbsp;Check out more lists like <a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/best-movies-for-kids" target="_blank">best movies for kids</a>, <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/most-annoying-kids-shows-of-all-time/ranker-tv" target="_blank">most annoying kids shows</a>, <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/best-apps-for-parents/dad-of-the-year" target="_blank">best apps for parents</a>, and <a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/best-books-for-toddlers" target="_blank">best books for toddlers</a>.

Overrated

Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze

<a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-most-overrated-movies-of-all-time?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">The most overrated</a> museums in the world, ranked by the wisdom of the crowd. From the boring to the downright bonkers, this is the place to list all those awful museums who somehow have way more hype than they deserve -- or at least the ones that definitely didn't deserve to get your admission money. Save other people from being duped by the world's worst art museums, history museums, etc., and list 'em here. Who knows, you may even get some good karma points for it.

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The Most Overrated Museums In The World

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Getty Villa

The Getty Villa in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Villa is an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The collection has 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, including the Lansdowne Heracles and the Victorious Youth. The UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation is housed on this campus. The collection is documented and presented through the online GettyGuide as well as through audio tours.

California State Railroad Museum

The California State Railroad Museum is a museum in the state park system of California, USA, interpreting the role of the "iron horse" in connecting California to the rest of the nation. It is located in Old Sacramento at 111 I Street.
The museum features 21 restored locomotives and railroad cars, some dating back to 1862. The "Sierra Scene" shows a large scale mockup of a construction scene high in the Sierra Nevada representing Donner Pass circa 1867, featuring the locomotive Gov. Stanford. Other exhibits show how the influence of railroads changed American society, influencing travel, commerce and daily life, as well as the lives of railroaders and the diversity of people who work on railroads. Changing exhibits featuring photography, ephemera, and artifacts from the museum's collection, add depth and incidental information to the overall story of railroad history. The Museum has an extensive educational program for elementary students from across the region to help them learn about railroad history using re-enactments, costumed docents, and including train and handcar rides.

National Museum, Warsaw

The National Museum in Warsaw is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in Warsaw. It comprises a rich collection of ancient art, counting about 11,000 pieces, an extensive gallery of Polish painting since the 16th century and a collection of foreign painting including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, ceded to the Museum by the American authorities in post-war Germany. The museum is also home to numismatic collections, a gallery of applied arts and a department of oriental art, with the largest collection of Chinese art in Poland, comprising some 5,000 objects.
The Museum boasts the Faras Gallery with Europe's largest collection of Nubian Christian art and the Gallery of Medieval Art with artefacts from all regions historically associated with Poland, supplemented by selected works created in other regions of Europe.

Victoria.M

Copernicus Science Centre

Copernicus Science Centre is a science museum standing on the bank of the Vistula River in Warsaw, Poland. It contains over 450 interactive exhibits that enable visitors to single-handedly carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. The Centre is the largest institution of its type in Poland and one of the most advanced in Europe. On 25 September 2012 the Centre celebrated its two-millionth visitor.
The first module of the Centre building was opened on 5 November 2010 with five galleries; the exhibit for teenagers – RE: generation was opened 3 March 2011; a planetarium The Heavens of Copernicus opened on 19 June, the Discovery Park on 15 July, chemistry laboratory - 18 October; biology laboratory - 15 November, robotics workshop - 6 December, and physics laboratory - 20 December.
Since 2008, the Copernicus Science Centre together with Polish Radio has organized the Science Picnic - Europe's largest outdoor science-popularization event. In 2011 the Centre hosted the ECSITE conference – one of the most important events in the field of science centres and museums in the world.

Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.
It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as Beaubourg. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. As of 2006, the Centre Pompidou has had over 180 million visitors since 1977 and more than 5,209,678 visitors in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum.
The sculpture, Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is twenty-five feet high, was placed in 2012 in front of the Centre Pompidou.

Wawel Castle

The Gothic Wawel Castle in Kraków in Poland was built at the behest of Casimir III the Great, who reigned from 1333 to 1370, and consists of a number of structures situated around the central courtyard.
In the 14th century it was rebuilt by Jogaila and Jadwiga of Poland. Their reign saw the addition of the tower called the Hen's Foot and the Danish Tower. The Jadwiga and Jogaila Chamber, in which the sword Szczerbiec, was used in coronation ceremonies, is exhibited today and is another remnant of this period. Other structures were developed on the hill during that time as well, in order to serve as quarters for the numerous clergy, royal clerks and craftsmen. Defensive walls and towers such as Jordanka, Lubranka, Sandomierska, Tęczyńska, Szlachecka, Złodziejska and Panieńska were erected in the same period.
The Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Hill constitute the most historically and culturally important site in Poland. For centuries the residence of the kings of Poland and the symbol of Polish statehood, the Castle is now one of the country’s premier art museums.

European Solidarity Centre

Warsaw Uprising Museum

The Warsaw Uprising Museum, located in the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland, is a museum dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The institution of the Museum was established in 1983, but no construction work took place for many years, and the museum finally opened on July 31, 2004, marking the 60th anniversary of the Uprising.
The Museum sponsors research into the history of the Uprising, and the history and possessions of the Polish Underground State. It collects and maintains hundreds of artifacts, ranging from weapons used by the insurgents to love letters, in order to present a full picture of the people involved. The Museum's stated goals include the creation of an archive of historical information on the Uprising and the recording of the stories and memories of the still living Uprising participants. Its director is Jan Ołdakowski.
The museum is a member organisation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.

Royal Castle, Warsaw

The Royal Castle in Warsaw is a castle residency and was the official residence of the Polish monarchs. It is located in the Castle Square, at the entrance to the Warsaw Old Town. The personal offices of the king and the administrative offices of the Royal Court of Poland were located there from the 16th century until the Partitions of Poland.
The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was drafted here by the Four-Year Sejm. In the 19th century, after the collapse of the November Uprising, it was used as an administrative centre by the Tsar. Between 1926 and World War II the palace was the seat of the Polish president, Ignacy Mościcki. After the devastation done by Nazis during the Warsaw Uprising, the Castle was rebuilt and reconstructed. In 1980, the Royal Castle, together with the Old Town was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today it is a historical and national monument, and is listed as a national museum.

George Bush Presidential Library

The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library of George H. W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States. Located on a 90-acre site on the west campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, the library is one of 13 administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Sukiennice Museum

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum is New York City's second largest in physical size and holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.
Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn and founded in 1895, the Beaux-Arts building, designed by McKim, Mead and White, was planned to be the largest art museum in the world. The museum initially struggled to maintain its building and collection, only to be revitalized in the late 20th-century, thanks to major renovations. Significant areas of the collection include antiquities, specifically their collection of Egyptian antiquities spanning over 3,000 years. African, Oceanic, and Japanese art make for notable antiquities collections as well. American art is heavily represented, starting at the Colonial period. Artists represented in the collection include Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Max Weber. The museum also has a "Memorial Sculpture Garden" which features salvaged architectural elements from throughout New York City.

Getty Center

The Getty Center, in Los Angeles, California, is a campus of the Getty Museum and other programs of the Getty Trust. The $1.3 billion Center opened to the public on December 16, 1997 and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles. The Center sits atop a hill connected to a visitors' parking garage at the bottom of the hill by a three-car, cable-pulled hovertrain funicular.
Located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, the Center is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum and draws 1.3 million visitors annually. The Center branch of the Museum features pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American, Asian, and European photographs. In addition, the Museum’s collection at the Center includes outdoor sculpture displayed on terraces and in gardens and the large Central Garden designed by Robert Irwin. Among the artworks on display is the Vincent Van Gogh painting Irises.
Designed by architect Richard Meier, the campus also houses the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the J.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

The Wieliczka Salt Mine, located in the town of Wieliczka in southern Poland, lies within the Kraków metropolitan area. The mine, built in the 13th century, produced table salt continuously until 2007, as one of the world's oldest salt mines still in operation. From its beginning and throughout its existence, the Royal mine was run by the Żupy krakowskie Salt Mines. Commercial mining was discontinued in 1996 due to low salt prices and mine flooding.
The mine's attractions include dozens of statues, three chapels and an entire cathedral that has been carved out of the rock salt by the miners. The oldest sculptures are augmented by the new carvings by contemporary artists. About 1.2 million people visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine annually.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. which has one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection, which contains the largest collection of New Deal art; a collection of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings, and masterpieces from the Gilded Age; photography, modern folk art, works by African American and Latino artists, images of western expansion, and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century.
The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program, including Artful Connections, real-time video conference tours. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

Czartoryski Museum

The Czartoryski Museum and Library is a museum located in Kraków, Poland, founded in Puławy in 1796 by Princess Izabela Czartoryska. The Puławy collections were partly destroyed after the November uprising of 1830–1831 and the subsequent confiscation of the Czartoryskis' property by the Russians. Most of the museum holdings, however, were saved and moved to Paris, where they reposed at the Hôtel Lambert. In 1870 Prince Władysław Czartoryski decided to move the collections to Kraków, where they arrived in 1876. The city was granted a degree of autonomy after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs is the presidential library and final resting place of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. Designed by Hugh Stubbins and Associates, the library is located in Simi Valley, California, about 40 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and 15 miles west of Chatsworth. The library may be accessed by driving to the Olsen Road exit on State Route 23, which connects to the nearby Ronald Reagan Freeway, State Route 118.
The Reagan Library is the largest of the 13 federally operated presidential libraries. The street address, 40 Presidential Drive, is numbered in honor of Reagan's place as the 40th President.
The Reagan Library is open daily from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., with the exception of a few holidays. Parking is free, as is access to the grounds surrounding the library, but there is an admission fee for entry into the library and special exhibits.

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film and electronic media.
The Library's holdings include approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, and over 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists and groups. The archives holds primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art.
MoMA also houses a restaurant, the Modern, run by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since 1990, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Of six buildings of the main museum complex, five, named the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage and Hermitage Theatre, are open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City, is the largest art museum in the United States and one of the ten largest in the world. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at The Cloisters in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art.
Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870.

The Hermitage

The Hermitage is a historical plantation and museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States, 10 miles east of downtown Nashville. The plantation was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, from 1804 until his death at the Hermitage in 1845. Jackson only lived at the property occasionally until he retired from public life in 1837. It is a National Historic Landmark.

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum dedicated to human history and culture, located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection, numbering some 8 million works, is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence and originates from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.
The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum in South Kensington in 1881. Some objects in the collection, most notably the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, are the objects of controversy and of calls for restitution to their countries of origin.

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum in London is a museum exhibiting a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.
The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a world-renowned centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a cathedral of nature—both exemplified by the large Diplodocus cast which dominates the vaulted central hall.

jackslee2

Madame Tussauds London

Madame Tussauds London is a museum and tourist attraction located in Central London, housed in the former London Planetarium. It is known for recreating life size wax models of celebrities. The attraction houses its famous Chamber of Horrors. Set up by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud on Marylebone Road in 1884 it is the first Madame Tussauds. As of November 2013 the official website listed the following wax models:
Bollywood Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Katrina Kaif
Culture Madame Tussaud, Pablo Picasso, Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein
Hollywood Stars Bruce Willis, Charlie Chaplin, Colin Firth, Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Craig, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Russell Brand, Taylor Lautner, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie
Marvel Super Heroes Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Nick Fury, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Wolverine

Chris Staples

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on October 18, 1997, by the past King Juan Carlos I of Spain. Built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Cantabrian Sea, it is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists.
One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.

The most overrated museums in the world, ranked by the wisdom of the crowd. From the boring to the downright bonkers, this is the place to list all those ...