Best Museums in Europe | Art, History & Cultural Collections

Marc Chagall National Museum

Purpose-built Cimiez museum holding Chagall's Biblical Message cycle, with a stained-glass concert hall, a mosaic and a Mediterranean garden.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice

A Belle Époque villa-museum near the Promenade des Anglais, showing art from the 12th to the 20th century, from Bronzino to Dufy and Jules Chéret.

Musée Masséna

A Belle Époque villa on the Promenade des Anglais telling the story of Nice and the Riviera, with Napoleonic treasures and a historic seaside garden.

Tretyakov Gallery

Russia's great national art museum, from medieval icons to avant-garde, across the historic Lavrushinsky Lane building and the New Tretyakov.

Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve

Catherine the Great's pseudo-Gothic palace complex in southern Moscow, with ponds, a vast park and a dancing light-and-music fountain.

Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve in Moscow with historic churches and wooden architecture

Kolomenskoye Historical and Architectural Museum

Moscow's former royal estate above the Moskva River, home to a UNESCO-listed white church, a rebuilt wooden palace and apple orchards.

Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace)

Russia's imperial Winter Palace and one of the world's greatest art museums, holding about three million works on the Neva embankment.

Fabergé Museum

A private museum in a restored Neo-Renaissance palace, home to nine imperial Fabergé Easter eggs and over 4,000 works of Russian decorative art.

Russian Museum in St. Petersburg with its grand yellow-and-white neoclassical façade

Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

The world's largest museum of Russian art, set in Carlo Rossi's Mikhailovsky Palace, with icons, masterworks and avant-garde from the 10th century on.

Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg with its distinctive turquoise-and-white Baroque façade

Kunstkamera, St. Petersburg

Russia's oldest museum, founded by Peter the Great in 1714 and housed in a Petrine Baroque building on Vasilievsky Island facing the Neva.

Perlan in Reykjavík with its glass dome overlooking the city and snowy mountains

Perlan, Reykjavik

A glass-domed landmark on Öskjuhlíð hill with an indoor ice cave, a planetarium and a 360-degree viewing deck over Reykjavik.

National Museum of Iceland

Iceland's oldest museum, tracing the nation's story from Viking-age settlement to the modern era through roughly 2,000 objects.

Árbær Open Air Museum

Iceland's largest open-air museum, with more than 20 historic buildings forming a square, village and farm that show Reykjavík's past.

Whales of Iceland

A harbourside museum in Reykjavik where 23 life-size whale and dolphin models fill an underwater-style hall.

Icelandic Phallological Museum

A quirky, family-friendly Reykjavik museum showing 300+ real specimens from over 100 mammal species, plus folklore, art and a phallic-themed café.