Museums

A close-up of curved, sculptural red-brick columns evoking the expressionist brickwork of the Amsterdam School.

Het Schip: The Amsterdam School Masterpiece Built as Social Housing

Het Schip is a 1919 block of workers' housing in the Spaarndammerbuurt that doubles as a masterpiece of the Amsterdam School —…

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A classical stone statue in an arched garden niche with a small fountain, framed by clipped box hedges in a formal garden.

Amsterdam

Museum Van Loon: Step Inside a Lived-In Amsterdam Canal House

Museum Van Loon is a grand 1670s canal house on the Keizersgracht, lived in by the aristocratic Van Loon family and now…

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An ornate gilded Baroque altar with a painted altarpiece and a crystal chandelier in a small church interior

Amsterdam

Our Lord in the Attic: Amsterdam’s Secret Church Hidden in a Canal House

Our Lord in the Attic (Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder) is a complete 17th-century Catholic church built in secret across the top…

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Barcelona

Refugi 307: Walk Through a Real Civil War Bomb Shelter Dug Into Montjuïc

Refugi 307 is one of the best-preserved of the roughly 1,400 air-raid shelters that Barcelona's residents dug by hand during the Spanish…

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Dubai

The Coffee Museum: Qahwa and Wind Towers in Al Fahidi

The Coffee Museum is a small, free museum in a restored wind-tower house in Al Fahidi, devoted to coffee history and, best…

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Dim vaulted stone arcade receding toward a distant lit archway, evoking a cool underground chamber.

Copenhagen

Cisternerne: Art in a Dripping Underground Reservoir Beneath a Park

Cisternerne is a former underground drinking-water reservoir beneath Søndermarken park in Frederiksberg, now a dripping, pitch-dark contemporary-art space where one artist a…

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Ancient Roman marble statues of gods and figures dramatically lit against a dark museum backdrop, evoking the classical sculpture at Centrale Montemartini.

Rome

Centrale Montemartini: Ancient Gods Among the Machines

Centrale Montemartini is Rome's first power station, now a Capitoline Museums annexe where hundreds of ancient marble statues are displayed against giant…

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Barcelona

Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau: The UNESCO Masterpiece That Out-Gaudís the Sagrada Família Queue

The Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau is a UNESCO-listed garden-city of Art Nouveau pavilions by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, built between about…

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Paris

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature: The Marais Mansion Full of Taxidermy and Contemporary Art

Two joined Marais townhouses — the 17th-century Hôtel de Guénégaud by François Mansart and the 18th-century Hôtel de Mongelas — holding around…

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A dimly lit gallery of classical marble statues and busts on plinths

London

Sir John Soane’s Museum: London’s Strangest House, and It’s Free

Sir John Soane's Museum is the former home of a Georgian architect who crammed it, floor to ceiling, with antiquities, sculptures, paintings…

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