The World's Top 5 Art Collections

Every art lover has at least visited a museum to quench his or her thirst for a display of high-quality artistry. Even the inexperienced eye would surely find something to appreciate as it scans the various art works available for the public. It is true that collecting valuable works has become man's endeavor for a number of decades owing to their intrinsic and sentimental importance, thus a museum can be considered as a place of ideas and emotions. Here are five of the world's best museums with art collections that progress past a normal exhibit.

Museum of Egyptian Antiquities

More commonly known as the Egyptian Museum, it was established in 1902 and has since housed more than one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptian antiquities. It has the Royal Mummy Room, which contains nine mummies from ancient times, one of which is Queen Hatshepsut, who served as the fifth pharaoh during the eighteenth dynasty. Found in Cairo, Egypt, the Egyptian Museum has two main floors. Its ground floor has an impressive collection of coins and papyrus whereas the first floor has a massive compilation of artifacts coming from Ancient Egypt's final two dynasties.

British Museum

With a collection of more than seven million objects, the British Museum is considered to have one of the largest compendiums of artifacts in the entire world. The place covers history from all parts of the world. It was established in 1753 while it houses a national gallery and a library within the same building. With no entrance fee whatsoever, it houses the Department of the Middle East, Prints and Drawings, Asia, Coins and Medals, Conservation and Scientific Research, and much more. The British Museum clearly belongs to the world's top 5 art collections.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met in New York City is one of the most famous museums in the world. With over two million valuable works divided into nineteen departments, it measures an incredible 400 meters and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet of land. It was founded in the year 1870 by American businessmen and artists as a response to the lack of artistic education during the era. Now The Met boasts plenty of curatorial departments with exhibits ranging from Ancient Egypt to Islamic art. Its modern art section, meanwhile, contains more than ten thousand works done by both European and American artists.

Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums located in Rome contain highly important works that represented the Roman Catholic Church throughout its long existence. Paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance era are among its highly valued collections. It was founded in the sixteenth century by Pope Julius II as a response to the lack of safe-keeping method for the valuable sculpture of Laoco�n, a Greek mythological figure who attempted to convince the Trojans not to accept the large wooden horse. In the year 2006, the Museums celebrated its 500th anniversary through the opening of the Vatican Hill necropolis excavation to the entire visiting public.

Musee du Louvre

Any list of the world's top 5 art collections would be incomplete without the mention of the world-famous Louvre in Paris. Who would have known that a mere twelfth-century fortress would turn into something as grand? Clearly one of the largest and most visited museums in the world, the Grand Louvre is home to nearly thirty five thousand important objects dating back from the prehistoric era right to the nineteenth century. First opened to the public on August 1793, it has since established eight curatorial departments, including Egyptian Antiquities, Greek, Roman Antiquities, Decorative Art, and Painting, which includes Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of the world's most well-known paintings.

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The World's Top 5 Art Collections

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