The 36 most beautiful museums in the world
One of the buildings in China's Forbidden City is the Palace Museum. It's a gorgeous wooden structure, and one of the most-visited museums in the world.
The Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain is one of Frank Gehry's most ambitious works.
London's Natural History Museum has cavernous, well-lit halls to illuminate its exhibits.
The world's largest museum — and that stubbornly modern pyramid in front — is also one of the world's most beautiful. Nothing else is like the Louvre in Paris.
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Guggenheim Museum in New York spirals upward. Its hollow center can be used to display big art pieces.
Berlin's Jewish Museum is in an iconic lightning-bolt-like zigzag, making it hard to see around the turns ahead.
Washington, DC is known for its Neoclassical-style museums, but the National Museum of the American Indian looks like a rock formation smoothed by the elements.
The largest museum in Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum looks like a crystal jutting out from rock.
The Moscow State Historical Museum is near the Red Square, and made with deep red bricks.
Another of Frank Gehry and Paris' most distinctive works, the Louis Vuitton Foundation looks like little else in the world.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a sprawling work of Neoclassical architecture, filled with columns and stone ledges that nonetheless give plenty of space for the treasures inside.
The Museum of Islamic Art in Quatar lives on its own artificial peninsula in Doha. It's influenced by ancient Islamic architecture, bridging the tradition to modernity.
The "wings" of the Milwaukee Art Museum fold and unfold daily.
The Salvador Dalí Museum in Figueres, Spain, is fittingly weird and delightful.
Once a gorgeous train station, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is now a gorgeous French art museum.
France's Cité du Vin opened earlier this year in Bordeaux. It's a museum for wine.
The Museum of Italian Art in Peru has two enormous Renaissance-style mosaics on its facade.
The Guardian said it best. The Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro "looks like a cross between a solar-powered dinosaur and a giant air conditioning unit."
Ecuador's Quito Astronomical Observatory has some of the most important scientific instruments of the past two centuries.
The different wings of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art look totally different. The Snøhetta expansion resembles a jagged metal sheet.
Prague's National Museum still has bullet holes and cracks from 20th century conflicts, which only add to its gravitas.
Russia's enormous Hermitage Museum is painted a bright seafoam green.
The Erawan Museum in Thailand is best known for its three-headed elephant sculpture on the roof.
The Mapungubwe Collection at the University of Pretoria in South Africa houses important artifacts from nearby excavations.
Like the rest of the Vatican, the city's museums are filled with colorful frescoes. Here's the Hall of Maps.
Housed on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, the University of Alaska Museum of the North is for the study of, well, the north.
Norway's Hedmark Museum is a huge glass shape that encloses and protects the ruins of a 12th-century cathedral within.
The Potala Palace in Tibet was the main residence of the Dalai Lama until the 1959 Tibet uprising. Now it's a museum for Buddhism.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú founded the Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso, Mexico City to honor Mexican and pre-Hispanic artwork. He named it after his late wife, who taught him to love art.
The Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts is the oldest in South America.
The China Maritime Museum in Lingang looks like two sails moving past each other.
Before it became an art museum, the Tigre Club in Argentina was a playground for the rich and famous.
Cape Town's Iziko Museum is the oldest in South Africa.
Formerly a research facility in the University of Tokyo, Japan's National Art Center resembles a glassy wave.
There's a "veil" on the outside of The Broad museum in Los Angeles, guarding the modern artwork within.
The Hanoi Museum's inverted pyramid has a spiral ramp inside that brings visitors to every exhibit.
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