Are you still looking for the top museums in the world to visit? Give a quick look to this article to know the world’s best museums along with beautiful the art and history.

The State Hermitage Museum, Russia

The State Hermitage Museum is an art and cultural museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the world’s second largest art museum. It was founded in the year 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates its annual launch on December 7; Santa Catherine’s Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. It attracted 4,956,524 visitors in 2019, ranking eighth among the world’s most visited art museums.

Its collections of which only a small part are permanently shown that contains more than 3 million objects  including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collection housed a large complex of six historic buildings adjacent to the Palace  including the Winter Palace( the site of the Russian monarchy). Apart from them, the Menshikov palace, the Pottery Museum, the Staraya Derevnya Museum and the eastern division of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has many exhibition centers abroad. Hermitage is a state-owned state. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.

Of the six main buildings in the museum, the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, the New Hermitage and the Hermitage Theater are open to the public. An entry ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fees paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, admission is free on the third Thursday every month for all guests, and free daily for students and children. The museum closed on Monday. The entrance for individual visitors is located at Winter Palace, which is accessible by Courtyard.

Art and Buildings

The history of the museum and its buildings is complex and can be best read on the museum’s website with a large number of photographs and captions. See suggestions on my Hermitage opening page. While the main building today, the former winter palace, was originally designed for Empress Elizabeth in the 1750s by a well-known architect, Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, each royal citizen placed his or her own interest in interior decoration. The fire of 1837, which greatly burned the building, required a great internal reconstruction, a work done over the next two decades to establish on a large scale what man sees today. Its design and decoration are, therefore, the work of centuries-old artists and painters, naot just one person. My photos here should be added by those on the corresponding pages on the museum’s website, where the links are provided.

The palace design was commissioned in 1754 by Russian Empress Elizabeth to Italian-born Russian designer Bartolomeo Rastrelli to create a beautiful Baroque residence on the site of a small palace, overlooking the Neva River, built by Peter the Kuhle nearly 40 years earlier.

Initially, the only building that housed the collection was the “Small Hermitage”. Today, the Hermitage Museum covers most of the Palace Embankment and its neighbors. Apart from the Little Hermitage, the museum now includes the “Old Hermitage” (also called the “Great Hermitage”), the “New Hermitage”, the “Hermitage Theater”, and the “Winter Palace”, the place where the Russian Youth lived. In recent years, Hermitage has expanded into the General Staff Building in Palace Square overlooking the Winter Palace, as well as the Menshikov Palace.

The Bristish museum, London

The British Museum, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, is a community center dedicated to human history, art, and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million jobs is among the largest and most extensive. The largest collection during the British Empire. It tells the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. It was the first national public museum in the world.

The British Museum was established in 1753, largely from the collections of Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It was first opened to the public in 1759, at Montagu House, on the site of the existing building. Its expansion over the next 250 years was the result of the expansion of British colonies and led to the construction of several branch centers, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881.

In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 closed the library library at the British Museum, but continued to manage the now-defunct British Library in the classroom and in the construction of the museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental government body funded by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and like all UK national museums it does not charge entry fees, except for loan shows.

Its ownership of some of its most famous imported objects is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, especially in the case of the Elgin Marbles of Greece and the Rosetta Stone of Egypt.

Foundation

On June 7, 1753, King George II donated his Royal Assent to an Act of Parliament that established the British Museum. Cotton, dating from Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, a collection of Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the “Old Royal Library”, now a Royal manuscript, compiled by various British monarchs. Together these “basic collections” comprise many of the most valuable books now in the British Library including the Gospels of Lindisfarne and one surviving Beowulf manuscript.

The British Museum was the first of its kind of new museum – national, non-church or king, open to the public and intended to collect everything. Sloane’s collection, while incorporating many mixed elements, often revealed his scientific interests. The addition of Cotton and Harley’s manuscripts introduced manuscripts and archeology, and it meant that the British Museum was now a National Museum and Library.

Buildings and Architecture

The Greek font overlooking the Great Russell Street is a feature of Sir Robert Smirke’s character, which has 44 columns in a ionic sequence of 14 meters high, heavily derived from those of the Athena Polias temple in Priene in Asia Minor. The base above the main entrance is adorned with Sir Richard Westmacott’s sculptures depicting the Progress of Civilization, with fifteen identical numbers, inscribed in 1852.

Construction began around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King’s Library) in 1823-1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833-1838, originally housed among other exhibitions in the classroom, now the Wall Gallery. Work also continued in the northern part of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826-1831, the Montagu House was demolished in 1842 to open up the last part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and the South Wing also a large pavilion, which began in 1843 and was completed in 1843. 1847, during the public opening of Front Hall and the Great Staircase. The museum faces the Portland rock, but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were constructed using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported by the unique Haytor Granite.

British Museum Now

Today the museum no longer has a collection of natural history, and the manuscripts and manuscripts that once owned are now part of the British Independent Library. The museum, however, preserves the space in its collection of artefacts that represent world, ancient and modern cultures. The first collection of 1753 has grown to over 13 million objects in the British Museum, 70 million in the National History Museum and 150 million in the British Library.

The Traveling Classroom, built by architect Sydney Smirke, was opened in 1857. For nearly 150 years, researchers have come here to examine the museum’s extensive library. The Classroom was closed in 1997 when the British Library moved to a new building in St Pancras. Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center.

The Louvre museum, Paris

The Louvre Museum is located in Paris, France. It is best known for being the home of the Mona Lisa. The city’s landmark, located at the Right Seine Bank in the city’s first location (district or ward). About 38,000 objects from prehistoric to the 21st century are shown over an area of ​​72,735 square meters (782,910 square feet). In 2019, the Louvre received 9.6 million visitors, making it the most visited museum in the world. However, the number of visitors dropped by 72 percent to 2.7 million by 2020, due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the decline in the number of foreign tourists.

The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a Louvre castle in the late 12th to 13th centuries under Philip II. Remains of the fort can be seen in the museum’s basement. As a result of the expansion of the cities, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I turned it into the residence of the French monarchs. The building was expanded several times to accommodate the present-day Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Versailles palace for his family, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place of imperial exhibition, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman statues. [8] In 1692, the building was owned by Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 hosted the first series of salons. Academie lived in the Louvre for a hundred years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decided that the Louvre should be used as a museum to showcase national art.

Opening of Museum

The museum opened on August 10, 1793, the first anniversary of the death of the monarchy. The public was given free access three days a week, which was seen as a great achievement and was greatly appreciated. The collection featured 537 paintings and 184 works of art. Three quarters were taken from royal collections, the remaining emigres and Church property. To expand and organize the collection, the Republic donated 100,000 livres a year. In 1794, French colonial forces began bringing in fragments from Northern Europe, added after the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) with Vatican activities, such as Laocoon and His Sons and the Apollo Belvedere, to establish the Louvre as a museum and “symbol of imperial empire”.

The early days were bustling; Lucky artists continue to live in the living room, and the unmarked paintings hang “frame fenced from apartment to roof”. The building itself was closed in May 1796 due to lack of building. It reopened on July 14, 1801, arranged in chronological order with new light and columns.

Art and Paintings

The Objets d’art collection covers the period from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century. The department began as a fragment of a department of sculptures, based on the royal residence and the transfer of work from Basilioque Saint-Denis, the burial place of French kings who ruled the Coronation Sword of the Kings of France.  Among the most important functions of the emerging group were pietre dure vases and bronze. The discovery of Durand’s collection in 1825 added “pottery, enamels, and stained glass”, and 800 pieces were donated to Pierre Révoil. The advent of Romanism rekindled interest in Renaissance and Medieval art, and the Sauvageot contribution expanded the department with 1,500 works of middle-aged age. In 1862, the Campana collection added gold and maiolica jewelry, mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries.

The works are on display on the first floor of Richelieu Wing and in the Apollo Gallery, designed by artist Charles Le Brun, who was commissioned by Louis XIV (Sun King) to decorate the space with a solar theme. The medieval collection consists of the anointing crown of Louis XIV, the scepter of Charles V, and the 12th-century porphyry vase. Renaissance masterpieces include Giambologna’s bronze made by Nessus and Deianira and Maximillian’s Hunt. [103] Since recent times, notable ones include Madame de Pompadour’s Serevres collection and Napoleon III’s living quarters.

In September 2000, the Louvre Museum donated the Gilbert Chagoury and the Rose-Marie Chagoury Gallery to exhibit paintings by the Chagourys, including a sixteenth-century chamber, adorned with gold and silver cords representing sea gods, sent to Paris by Colbert de Seignel.