Galleries

[Veggibear]

Can anyone recommend any art galleries or museums to visit in Europe?

[jake-the-peg]

Er Europe's quite big and there's an awful lot of top rate museums and galleries

In no particular order some of the first division are

Prado- Madrid - claimed world's largest gallery

Louvre- Paris - what can you say mona lisa and all that

Tate and Tate modern - London - Huge modern art collections

Uffizi - Florence - possibly the greatest renaissance art collection in the world

Rijksmuseum - Amsterdam - old masters galore Rembrandt house nearby


Natural History Museum - London - building alone is worth the trip

British Museum - London - incredible collection of antiquities from the ancient world Rosetta stone, Elgin Marbles...

Give us a bit of a hint on countries at least

[Veggibear]

Have you visited any of these? Interested in peoples experiences rather than what's recommended on t'internet.

Was thinking Prague, Germany, Cyprus or Greece. Would welcome ANY other options.

[jake-the-peg]

Tate and Tate modern and Rijksmuseum
all very good.

The Queues for the Louvre were just too silly when I was last in Paris, that's very likely to be a problem in the Uffizi.

Natural History Museum is great and I could spend a small lifetime in the British Museum.

[jno]

national archeological museum is a must in Athens, though it's 20 years since I was there. Heaps of ancient Greek stuff. Germany, see the islands on Museuminsel in Berlin.
http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/museumi nsel.html

[Xollob]

Not really into museums, but did enjoy on several occasions the Deutsche Museum in Munich: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/e_index.htm
Plenty of buttons to press and sawn off submarines.

[Xollob]

Still just about in Europe, Istanbul's Topkapı Palace and
Hagia Sofia take some beating. I've lost count the number of times I've been there, but every time I have to visit the Hagia Sofia.

[Buenchico]

As JTP has stated, Europe's a big place. There are around 350 museums and art galleries in London alone, so the list could get rather long!

Here are a few suggestions for your list:

The most stunning art collection I've ever seen is in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille:
http://www.mairie-lille.fr/LilleTouristique/GB /MuseesGB/PmuseeGB.htm

My personal choice, for London's finest museum, has to be the V&A:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/

I'm currently communicating with a guy in Colorado who'll be making his first visit to the UK in September. He's said that he wants to visit some distinctly ''English' or 'British' museums. Adopting a fairly wide definition of 'museum', my suggestions have included Beamish:
http://www.beamish.org.uk/
and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard:
http://www.flagship.org.uk/welcome.html

Chris

[jno]

the Museum of London is well worth a visit Chris (and Veggibear) - I always try to visit city museums when in foreign towns, and this is the best by miles, a tremendous historical collection.

[Poppy]

If you go to Prague there is a fantastic gallery dedicated to Cubism. It's in a beautiful cubist building too with a great gift shop on the ground floor.

[lynlockwood]

You could travel to the depths of Slovakia to a little hamlet called Medzilaborza which was the birthplace of Andy Warhol where there is a very big Andy Warhol museum and the Velvet Underground playing to the trees via speakers leaning out of the office windows. It's nearly 2 days travel from Bratislava, contains virtually no authentic paintings (they are all repros) and is in the middle of nowhere. It's a very surreal and Warholian experience.

[Narolines]

If you're into more recent art the Museum of Modern Art in Prague is a definite must-see. The cubist museum is also excellent, I agree. For my money the best "musuem" in Prague isn't really a musuem - it's the Obecni Dum, a suberp Art Nouveau building, the tour of which will blow your socks off. They also have pretty damn good exhibitions there on a regular basis.

As far as Cyprus is concerned, it's not an art gallery/museum -ish kind of country, as most of its antiquities and cultural heritage are all around you; however, I'd recommend as must-sees the Pafos mosaics and the Kourion archaeological site. There are one or two fairly interesting museums in Nicosia - The Leventis and the Hadjigeorgiou Mansion spring to mind - but probably not worth making a special journey for. Nicosia is, frankly, not a particularly pleasant city, especially in the summer heat.

[Narolines]

That's "museum" and "superb"..........

[jno]

If you're in North Cyprus try the shipwreck museum in Kyrenia, built around the oldest known ship - dating from about 290BC (and already about 80 years old when it sank). Fascinating.

Here's a link: http://www.northcyprusonline.com/North-Cyprus- Online-Sightseeing-Kyrenia-Shipwreck-Museum.ph p

[pimlico]

I loved the Chagall museum in Nice, and the Van Gogh in Amsterdam.

[Narolines]

Agree about the VG in Amsterdam. I found the Rijksmuseum a little disappointing, I have to say, but the VG is superb.