The strangest thing about Vincent Van Gogh is how much of his life he divulged. More than 600 personal letters, sent to his brother Theo, walk us through whatever was on his easel that week. The pioneer of Post-Impressionism sold next to nothing, died young, and the one canvas he privately dismissed as an overreach is now one of the most illustrious images on earth. Which leaves the practical question of where to find Van Gogh paintings, scattered as they are across two continents.

His Life in Brief

Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and came to painting rather late, picking it up seriously only at 27. By then, he had already worked as an art dealer and a school teacher in England, and had a stint as a lay preacher who gave away most of what he owned to live among Belgian coal miners. Mostly self-taught and bankrolled by his brother Theo, young Vincent learned fast. Two years in Paris from 1886 dragged his palette out of the dark Dutch browns into something nobody who knew his early work would have even recognized. By early 1888, Van Gogh headed south to Arles, chasing the kind of light he had seen in Japanese woodblock prints.

The 14 months he spent in Arles elicited roughly 200 paintings and ended with the breakdown and that famous ear. The painter checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy and kept eagerly painting in the lucid gaps between episodes, then moved to Auvers-sur-Oise the next year for what looked like the start of a recovery. Alas, it was not. Van Gogh died there 70 days later, having somehow made 75 more paintings in that time. Theo outlived him by a mere six months, and the two of them lie side by side in the village churchyard.

The fullest record of how he got from the brown to the blaze is in Amsterdam, in a museum that almost did not even happen, and might not have if one woman had not understood exactly what she was sitting on.

1. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Van Gogh Museum holds more than 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and the original Van Gogh letters, and the reason it all sits together in one place is Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Theo’s widow.

When Theo died in 1891, shortly after Vincent, Jo was left with a stack of paintings almost nobody wanted to buy, and a pile of correspondence she knew straight away was worth something. She spent the next three decades lending the work out, badgering museum directors, and talking up critics until the reputation stuck. Her name barely comes up in the usual Van Gogh story, which is a small injustice, because without her, there would probably be no museum at all.

The collection runs in order, so you can more or less walk the transformation from one room to the next. At one end is The Potato Eaters (1885), made deliberately gloomy, lit by a lamp the color of wet earth. A few steps and three years on, you are standing in front of the Arles paintings, the yellows and blues delightfully bright. It is hard to believe the same hand created both.

Insider Tip: It is one of the most visited museums in Europe, so book your timed entry weeks ahead if you are going in the summer.

Paris handed him color, while Arles handed him the rest. When Van Gogh turned up there, he’d tell Theo that his painting speed was equal parts thrilling and frightening. The paintings from that first Arles summer, where his mature style finally comes into its own, are best seen in Paris.

2. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

The d’Orsay has a couple of dozen Van Goghs, and the one to find first is Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888), which he painted outdoors on a balmy September night in Arles with the real stars overhead. Van Gogh wrote to Theo about it, going on about the gas lamps reflected in the water and the fact that he had painted the thing outdoors and at night, under nothing but the gas. For the painter in that period, a night out at the easel was fairly ordinary.

Upstairs, you will also find The Church at Auvers (1890), painted just weeks before he died. The building tilts slightly against the sky, and the path in front of it splits in two, both forks heading away from you. Van Gogh told his sister Wil that the church struck him as having a violet tone. She kept the letter, which is the only reason we know.

Insider Tip: The Van Gogh rooms are up on the top floor of the old railway station; the museum lives inside.

Paul Gauguin moved into the Yellow House in October 1888, the two painters meeting at the behest of Theo Van Gogh. They painted side by side for nine weeks, but the friendship curdled over an argument nobody has ever quite figured out, and it ended with Van Gogh cutting off part of his own ear. A slight overreaction, one might say. Vincent was hospitalized, then admitted himself to the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he went on painting. One of those paintings is now, after the Mona Lisa, about the most recognized picture on the planet. In the ultimate show of imposter syndrome, Vincent thought Starry Night was a dud.

3. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

MoMA has had The Starry Night (1889) since 1941, when it came in through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, acquired by exchange rather than bought over a counter. Van Gogh had told Theo the painting was an exaggeration, an idea shoved further than it should have gone, and Theo was not especially keen on it either. It changed hands several times and drew little notice for years. Then MoMA got hold of it, and the reputation climbed to a height the man riddled with self-doubt would have found baffling.

Not unlike the Mona Lisa, Starry Night is smaller than many expect, measuring only around 29 by 36 inches. Those ridges and furrows of thick paint, laid down in long loaded strokes, do not show up well in any reproduction, so the surface only really works when you’re standing in front of it. The swirl in the sky is not blended at all, but built entirely out of the direction of the brushmarks. Getting close enough to see that is a completely different experience from seeing it on a tote bag.

The second-biggest Van Gogh collection on earth is not in a city at all. It is out in a forest in the Netherlands, put together almost single-handedly by a woman who backed her own eye against everyone else’s advice.

4. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Helene Kröller-Müller began hoarding Van Gogh paintings in 1907, back when they were going cheap and the artist’s reputation was anything but stellar. Her advisors told her she was just overpaying for a nobody, but she bought close to 300 pieces over the next 20 years anyway. The museum she built for them sits deep in the woodsy Hoge Veluwe National Park, several miles from the nearest anything. It might be an odd place to find one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, but it somehow fits perfectly.

The painting that justifies the trek on its own is Café Terrace at Night (1888), made in Arles. It was the first time Van Gogh painted a starry sky, and he did it on the spot, outdoors in the dark, working under the gas lamps rather than from memory. He wanted to prove a night scene did not have to be done in blacks and grays, and the glow of the terrace against the deep blue does exactly that. The café is still there on the Place du Forum, trading now as the Café Van Gogh.

Insider Tip: There is a national park entry fee on top of museum admission. You can grab one of the free white park bikes to ride out to the building, which is half the fun of going.

In May 1890, Van Gogh left Saint-Rémy and went north to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village an hour out of Paris, where a doctor named Gachet had agreed to keep half an eye on him. 70 days, 75 canvases. And then, on July 27, he walked out into the fields with his gear, shot himself in the chest, made it back to the inn, and died two days later with Theo beside him. The village has barely changed since.

5. Auvers-sur-Oise, France

More of a pilgrimage site than a museum, quite rightly, Auvers is a must-visit for anyone who wants to get in Van Gogh’s headspace. The little church Van Gogh painted is still standing and, from the right angle, still looks like it might lean off into the sky. The Auberge Ravoux, the inn where he died, is a working restaurant now, and you can go up and see his tiny room on the top floor. Vincent and Theo are in the churchyard, side by side under the ivy, and there are nearly always fresh sunflowers on the graves.

Wheatfield with Crows hangs back in Amsterdam, and it often gets read as some kind of suicide note in paint, since it was long believed to be the last painting Van Gogh made. But he painted in the middle of July, and the Van Gogh Museum now reckons his actual final canvas was the unfinished Tree Roots. Van Gogh had written to Theo about these fields a few weeks earlier, calling them vast and troubled, but he never called the painting a goodbye, and the idea that it was his parting note doesn’t really hold up.

Insider Tip: Auvers is about 22 miles north of Paris, an easy train from Gare du Nord, changing at Pontoise. As day trips go, though, it is more intense than one might expect, so plan for an overnighter.

One of Van Gogh’s most loved paintings of all ended up in Chicago, and the way it got there has less to do with dealers circling a famous name than with a grieving husband.

6. The Art Institute of Chicago, USA

The Art Institute has The Bedroom (1889), one of three versions Van Gogh made of the same room, his own abode at the Yellow House at Arles. This is the second of the three, and he actually painted it inside the asylum at Saint-Rémy, copying the Arles original after that first canvas was water-damaged in a flood. Van Gogh told Theo he wanted the picture to feel like rest, like sleep. Everything in it, from the tipped-up perspective to the flat, unshaded color, comes straight out of his study of Japanese prints, pushed into something he could call his own. It might be the most deliberate thing he ever painted.

How it reached Chicago is a quieter story than the usual dealer intrigue. After Van Gogh’s death, the painting went to Theo, then to Jo, then through a couple of European hands before the dealer Paul Rosenberg sold it to Frederic Clay Bartlett in December 1926. Bartlett was collecting alone by then. His wife, Helen Birch Bartlett, had died of cancer the year before, and he was buying for the memorial collection he had set up in her name at the Art Institute. The Bedroom has hung there under her name ever since, next to Seurat’s Grande Jatte and Picasso’s Old Guitarist from the same gift.

Insider Tip: The Art Institute is on Michigan Avenue in the Loop. The Van Gogh and the Impressionists are up on the second floor.

Attempting to “see” the British Museum in two hours is just about impossible. Two full days would not suffice, either. The collection holds over 8 million objects, of which only about 80,000 are on display at any given time. If you were to spend 30 seconds with each one, you’d still need to be there for nearly a month. So, let’s agree that you should not try to see the British Museum. But you can experience it in a couple of hours.

Do These Two Things Before You Go

The mistake most visitors on a tight schedule make is treating the British Museum like a checklist. They walk in, feel gobsmacked by the scale of the Great Court, and then spend an hour shuffling through Egypt because everyone shuffles through Egypt. Technically, they have been to the British Museum, but they probably haven’t really soaked up any of it. Don’t do that.

Here’s how to do it better.

Book your ticket in advance. The permanent collections are free to visit, but entry slots are timed, so you still need to book your spot. Lines for walk-ins can easily swallow a precious 30 minutes of your time. Here’s where to make an account and book your admission ticket.

Download the museum map the night before. Rooms are numbered, but not always in the most intuitive way. If you spend a few minutes studying the floor map, you won’t be that person spinning in circles outside Room 33, wondering why Room 34 is apparently in a different wing!

First 10 Minutes: The Great Court

Most people treat the Great Court as just another lobby, but that would be the understatement of the century. In reality, it is one of the most extraordinary interior spaces in London, a two-acre courtyard covered by a tessellating glass roof designed by Foster and Partners, built around the famous circular Reading Room. Stand in the middle of it and look up. Give yourself 60 seconds to just be there and in the moment. The roof of the Great Court is worth a moment of your time. It includes 3,312 individual glass panels, none of them the same shape, held together by four miles of steel.

The Reading Room itself is now open to students and researchers again after more than a decade of closure. This room is where Karl Marx conducted much of the research behind Das Kapital, and the restored interior with its blue and gold dome still feels magnificent. Free guided tours also run on selected days if you’d like a more structured visit.

Next Half Hour: The Rosetta Stone and the Assyrian Galleries (Rooms 4 and 6–10)

Much like the Great Court is not just another courtyard, the Rosetta Stone is not just another stone slab. Inscribed in 196 BC, in three scripts (ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and ancient Greek) it acted as a decree issued by a council of priests in honor of the young king Ptolemy V. When French soldiers found it near the town of Rosetta in 1799, scholars immediately understood its incredible potential: the same text written in three writing systems meant that the known Greek version could, in theory, unlock the unknown Egyptian ones, too.

It still took more than two decades of work to see the translation come to life. The decisive breakthroughs came thanks to the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who cracked the phonetic logic of hieroglyphs in 1822. The Rosetta Stone didn’t just open a door to ancient Egypt, though; it essentially unlocked access to ancient thoughts that had been completely unreadable for centuries.

Then, and this is the real insider move, step past the Egyptian galleries and find the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs in Rooms 6 to 10. Almost everyone misses these because they’re already on their way to the mummies. Carved around 645 BC, for the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, they show lions being released from cages and hunted while the king watches from his chariot. The detail, particularly the suffering of the dying lions, is remarkable.

Next 30 Minutes: The Parthenon Sculptures (Room 18)

Walk back through the Great Court and over to Room 18 on the ground floor to reach the Parthenon Sculptures.

The Greek sculptures have attracted much controversy, most of which you will probably have heard about. While the argument about whether the sculptures belong in Athens is one worth having, feel free to do so, but after you’ve looked at the sculptures themselves.

The elaborate carvings were created roughly between 438 and 432 BC, under the direction of the sculptor Phidias, as decoration for the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. Experts consider them the absolute peak of classical Greek sculpture, but even a complete antiquity novice can’t help but be utterly moved by their incredible detailing.

Insider tip: the room tends to be busiest around the middle, so walk to the far end and look back along the entire frieze from the corner. The perspective from there gives a real sense of how the whole composition would have felt as it encircled the temple.

25 Minutes: The Lewis Chessmen (Room 40)

Carved from walrus ivory in the late 12th century, most likely in Norway, and discovered in a sandbank on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides in 1831, these chess pieces are among 93 objects found in just a single hoard. The figures depict kings, queens, bishops, knights, and rooks in the form of warriors biting their shields (a detail that never stops being wonderful), and simple obelisk-shaped pawns. They look like anxious little people; some of them have genuinely worried expressions, and notice the queen’s holding a hand pressed to the cheek in what reads unmistakably as exasperation.

They are funny and strange and beautiful and very old, and they will make you happy. Five minutes minimum.

Next 25 Minutes: Pick One More Thing

Here’s where you get freedom to respect your time and your interests. You’ll have about 20 minutes left at this point, so go ahead and use them on one thing. Not two or three, though, just choose one. One.

If you’re drawn to ancient Rome, go to Room 70 and find the Portland Vase: a 1st-century cameo glass vessel of such extraordinary technical refinement that it obsessed Josiah Wedgwood for years and still isn’t fully understood by modern glass-makers.

If you’d rather something visceral and strange, go to Room 50 and find Lindow Man, a bog body from Roman-era Britain preserved in peat for nearly 2,000 years. He is exactly as unsettling as he sounds and just as moving.

If you’re a lover of curiosities, Rooms 38 and 39 hold one of the finest collections of European clocks and watches anywhere, including a 16th-century mechanical galleon that would sail across a dinner table firing tiny cannons while playing music. It was made for a German princely court around 1585, which tells you everything you need to know about how the other half lived.

The Last 20 Minutes: Well Done, You, Now Take a Seat!

Now’s the time to take a breather and let your brain process what it’s soaked up before you leave. The Great Court cafe is a pretty decent place to do that, and there are also benches near the Reading Room if you want to sniff all those books without taking the guided tour.

The worst way to end a museum visit is to stumble out onto Great Russell Street blinking and slightly numb and immediately check your phone. So sit somewhere quiet and recount all you’ve seen, before getting on with your busy day.

A Few Practical Notes

The museum is busiest on Saturday afternoons and during weekday lunchtimes in the summer. Midweek mornings are the sweet spot, and if you can arrive when the doors open at 10 am, the first 45 minutes feel almost private by the standards of one of the world’s most visited museums.

The cloakrooms near the Great Court entrance are worth using if you have a bag larger than a small backpack. You’ll move faster and feel less encumbered, which matters more than you’d think over two hours of walking on stone floors.

Photography is permitted throughout most of the permanent collection, which is a gift. But put the phone away while you’re actually looking at things. Our best tip? Take your photos when you’re done looking, not instead of.

Although most people come to enjoy the landscape, on São Miguel you will also find historical cities, impressive monuments, and a deep connection to the ocean and the Portuguese Maritime Expansion.

The Island’s Past

São Miguel’s history dates back to the 15th century when the Portuguese discovered the island between 1427 and 1431.

The first settlers arrived in 1444 under the rule of the donatary captain Gonçalo Velho Cabral. Most of them came from the North, Alentejo, and Algarve regions of continental Portugal. A few years later, Moors, Jews, the French, and the English also settled in São Miguel.

The fertile soils and safe bays attracted these settlers, who quickly transformed the island into a trading post. The local economy thrived due to the cultivation and exportation of wheat and pastel (woad dye).

São Miguel’s first capital was Vila Franca do Campo. However, this only lasted until 1522, when a massive earthquake hit the island. The town was severely damaged, and under no condition to serve as the capital. As a result, Ponta Delgada, which had survived the earthquake, quickly became the most important city. Today, Ponta Delgada is the capital of the Azores Islands.

By the end of the 16th century, privateers often raided the island, searching for valuable cargo coming from India, Africa, and Brazil. Moreover, in 1582, Spanish troops occupied the island due to the Azorean resistance against the rule of the new Portuguese king, Philip II of Spain. In 1640, after the restoration of Portugal’s independence, São Miguel’s economy improved due to commercial trade with Brazil.

Orange exports became the most profitable business in the 18th century. The profits were then used to fund impressive gilded woodwork inside churches and the stonework of manor houses.

Povoação

In 1444, Gonçalo Velho Cabral landed on São Miguel Island and ordered the construction of a settlement.

The location was chosen due to the fresh streams of clear and sweet water surrounded by groves of cedar, sour cherry, and beech trees. The fertile lands and abundance of water helped settlers to establish their homes. Moreover, the easy access to the ocean allowed for an easy route to continental Portugal.

Wheat production was the main economic activity from the village’s early beginnings. That is why locals call Povoação the “Island granary.”

Today, Povoação, the first settlement in the Azores, is a village with a little over 1500 inhabitants.

While exploring Povoação, visit the Ermida de Santa Bárbara. This hermitage dates back to the 15th century and was the first Christian church on the island. Over the centuries, the church was damaged due to the island’s intense seismic activity. As a result, it was rebuilt in 1798 and again in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Unfortunately, the successive reconstruction works completely altered the hermitage layout, its lighting scheme, and its main features. Nevertheless, you can still admire its beauty and simplicity.

At Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário, you can admire a 16th-century church built in 1553. It is one of the oldest on São Miguel Island. Today, this church is classified as a Property of Public Interest by the Portuguese Government.

In Povoação, explore Capela da Nossa Senhora das Vitórias. This remarkable Neo-Gothic chapel located by the Lagoa das Furnas was built in the 19th century. José do Canto, a wealthy businessman and bibliophile born and raised in the Azores, ordered its construction. His goal was to mimic grandiose European cathedrals. Today, you can admire its impressive artistic features, such as its altar and stained glass.

At the Museu do Trigo (Wheat Museum), you can explore a 19th-century building where locals used to transform the wheat to prepare it for human consumption. Besides learning how local farmers worked, you can also learn about the industry’s impact on Povoação and São Miguel Island.

Vila Franca do Campo

Vila Franca do Campo is a small village that used to be one of the most important locations in the Azores islands.

During the first century of settlement, Vila Franca do Campo was home to nobleman Gonçalo Vaz Botelho, the Customs headquarters, and the Ombudsman’s Office. In 1472, Vila Franca do Campo was elevated to town status and, a few years later, received the first hospital on the archipelago.

In the 16th century, Vila Franca was a prosperous and influential town thanks to commercial trade. However, on October 22, 1522, a mighty earthquake destroyed Vila Franca. During the night, a massive landslide on the slopes surrounding Vila Franca caused a mudslide that buried most of the town. Hundreds of people perished and most of the survivors moved to other locations.

The donatary captain ordered the town’s reconstruction, but Vila Franca was too damaged. As a result, government facilities moved to Ponta Delgada. Nevertheless, Vila Franca remained an influential town in the Azores until the 18th century thanks to its orchards and fertile lands.

In 1582, Vila Franca witnessed a naval battle between the Spanish and the Portuguese crown during the War of the Portuguese Succession. Vila Franca was also the birthplace of Bento de Góis, who led the largest land exploration of Asia between 1602 and 1606. In the early 20th century, Vila Franca was the first location to have electricity.

While exploring Vila Franca, there are a few landmarks you must visit.

Ermida de Nossa Senhora da Paz is a very intriguing hermitage. If you have ever been to Braga, you will notice this hermitage looks like a small-scale version of Bom Jesus de Braga. Except the hermitage is much older.

The original building dates back to 1522, when the infamous earthquake destroyed most of it. More than two centuries later, a group of locals decided to rebuild the chapel. Alberto Pacheco was the architect behind the new project that included two naves separated by round arches and a Baroque chancel. Once you walk up the 100 steps and 10 terraces, you will be rewarded with breathtaking views over Vila Franca do Campo and its islet.

Igreja de São Miguel Arcanjo is one of the oldest churches in the Azores. Prince Henry the Navigator himself ordered the construction of this church in 1460. However, it was built several decades later.

The church was rebuilt soon after the 1522 earthquake. Workers used the same materials from the original construction and made an effort to respect the original Gothic style. The artillery damage on the church bell tower from a Corsair attack in 1624 is still visible today.

Another intriguing landmark is Castelo Branco, a 20th-century watchtower built as a scenic lookout post offering impressive views over São Miguel’s southern coastline. It is available to visit today.

Ponta Delgada

Ponta Delgada is the capital of the Azores islands and the largest city in the archipelago. Its settlement began in 1444 under the rule of the donatary captain Gonçalo Velho Cabral.

The fertile soils and humid climate provide perfect conditions for agriculture. These natural resources combined with the city’s strategic location helped strengthen the commercial routes between Europe and America, and Ponta Delgada’s role as an influential trading post.

As a result, the Customs House was transferred here in 1518. After Vila Franca do Campo’s destruction in 1522, Ponta Delgada was elevated to city status in 1546.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the large-scale exportation of wheat, sugar cane, wine, sweet potato, corn, and orange to England helped the island’s economic growth. However, in the 19th century, a disease in the orange orchards drastically reduced exports, forcing farmers to find new crops.

Today, Ponta Delgada is the Azores’ economic, administrative, and tourist center and home to the island’s university since 1975.

The rich architectural heritage of Ponta Delgada’s historical city center will allow you to find some of the oldest buildings in the archipelago.

Igreja Matriz de São Sebastião is a stunning church built over a small hermitage dedicated to Saint Sebastian between 1531 and 1547 during the reign of King João III.

While visiting this iconic landmark, you can admire the original Gothic style, the Manueline features, and the Baroque décor. On the façade, the Manueline portico stands out due to its intricate details. Inside, you will find carved cedar and rosewood, 17th and 18th-century imagery and tile panels, jacaranda furniture, and gold-embroidered tapestries from the 16th century.

Igreja do Colégio dos Jesuítas, located in Ponta Delgada’s historical city center, is a stunning church from the 16th century. Construction began in 1592. At the same time, a new convent was built for the Jesuits, who a few years later founded a college in the city.

At Igreja do Colégio dos Jesuítas you can observe Mannerist and Baroque features. The church façade was sculpted in local basalt stone. The golden shine from the Baroque gilded wood altar contrasts with the black and white façade. Inside, take some time to admire the traditional Portuguese blue and white tile panels.

Forte de São Brás is a unique example of military architecture in the Azores archipelago. It was built in the 16th century overlooking Ponta Delgada’s original anchorage to defend the anchored ships from English, French, and Algerian pirate attacks.

This polygonal-shaped fortress has four bastions on each corner and thick low walls. Over the centuries, the fortress was transformed and new expansions were added.

Since 1953, Forte de São Brás has been classified as a Property of Public Interest by the Portuguese Government. Today, it houses the Azores Military Zone Command and the Azores Military Museum.

One of the most recognizable landmarks in Ponta Delgada is Portas da Cidade. These city gates were originally built in 1783, next to the old harbor at Avenida Infante Dom Henrique. However, in 1952, they were transferred to their current location at Gonçalo Velho Cabral Square. They feature Baroque decorations which include the city’s symbols and three basalt stone arches.

Many wonders of ancient Egyptian civilization remain standing after more than three millennia. They tell the story of a sophisticated civilization that captures the modern imagination. The Nile Valley’s monumental architecture attracts millions of international tourists each year. From temples to tombs, if you visit Egypt today, these 15 ancient monuments should be on your must-see list!

1. The Great Pyramids of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza rises from the desert to astound visiting travelers. The Great Pyramid is the largest of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau, constructed by Khufu (known as Cheops by the Greeks) in c. 2566 BC during the 4th Dynasty. The 139-meter-tall pyramid took over twenty years to complete. An estimated 100,000 skilled craftsmen were employed, and the project used more than 2.3 million stone blocks. It was counted among the Seven Wonders of the World, and is the only one still standing.

The second Pyramid was built by Khufu’s son Khafre and stands 136 meters tall. It looks to be the largest of the three but was built at a higher elevation. The third and smallest pyramid (65 meters) was constructed by Menkaure and completed around 2510 BC. All were built as funerary monuments for the pharaohs, and were believed to transport them into the afterlife to live among the gods.

2. The Great Sphinx, Giza

The Great Sphinx at Giza is Ancient Egypt’s most unique monument. It is speculated that the 4th Dynasty Pharaoh Khafre built the mythical creature from a massive rock by adding his face and giving it the body of a lion, as the Sphinx lies close to his valley temple complex and the causeway leading to his Pyramid. Facing the sun, it was meant to ward off evil spirits and protect the pyramids.

It was rumored that Napoleon‘s soldiers blew off the Sphinx’s nose with their muskets. It is more likely that it was removed by Muslims in the late 1300’s who defaced the stone to stop local farmers from giving offerings to the statue.

3. Abu Simbel

The mighty Abu Simbel temple was carved directly into rock by Ramesses the Great at the peak of the 19th Dynasty in the 13th century BC as a reminder to Ancient Egypt’s Nubian territory that he was to be worshipped as a living god.

Four 20-meter-tall Colossal statues of Rameses II dominate the small entrance to the Great Temple. Inside, hieroglyphs describe his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. The Great Temple is dedicated to Rameses alongside the gods Ra-Harakhty, Amun Ra, and Ptah. The Small Temple is dedicated to his wife Queen Nefertari and the goddess Hathor. The facade features six standing 10-meter-tall statues, four of Ramesses and two of Nefertari.

The construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s created Lake Nasser, which threatened to submerge both temples. Therefore, between 1964 and 1968, a massive international UNESCO effort moved the temples 200 meters back and 65 meters higher up the mountain, and reassembled them inside two massive artificial concrete domes to recreate their original cliff setting.

4. The Colossi of Memnon

The Colossi of Memnon are two 20-meter-tall representations of pharaoh Amenhotep III, called Memnon by the Greeks in honor of the hero of the Trojan War. Built around 1350 BC, the sitting statues were part of his lost mortuary temple in the Theban Necropolis on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor. Over the past few decades, excavations of the grounds behind the statues have uncovered dozens of previously buried royal statues, lion-headed figures of the goddess Sekhmet, and additional fallen colossi.

The statues were carved from single blocks of quartzite sandstone quarried near modern-day Cairo and transported over 400 miles overland to Luxor, rather than floated down the Nile. The Colossi’s stones have been restored numerous times over the centuries, including by Roman Emperor Septimius Severus.

5. The Valley of The Kings

The Valley of the Kings lies on the Nile’s west bank near Luxor and is the cemetery for the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom (1539 – 1075 BC). Many different tombs of the elite from this period have been discovered in the desert valley, ranging in size from single coffins to elaborate underground tombs housing entire families on their journey to the afterlife.

The most famous tomb from the Valley of the Kings is that of the boy King Tutankhamun, found intact by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922. Later pharaohs such as Horemheb and Ramesses II (both buried close by) tried to have Tutankhamun removed from Egypt’s histories, which meant robbers and adventurers were unable to disturb his tomb for almost 3,500 years.

6. Temple of Edfu

The Temple of Edfu was built during the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the period from the death of Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, after whose death Egypt became part of the Roman Empire. Edfu is dedicated to Horus, the god of kings and the sky, and his consort Hathor.

Edfu fell into disuse as a temple during the latter stages of the 4th century AD due to the rise of Christianity and the outlawing of pagan worship at the end of that century. The hypostyle hall was badly burnt by arson, and many reliefs were defaced. Edfu was eventually built over by villagers and nearly buried. By the late 18th century, when European explorers first documented the area, the temple was almost entirely subterranean. Only the very tops of the 36-meter-tall entrance pylons peeped out above the village floor. Excavations began in the 1860s.

7. The Step Pyramid of Djoser

The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara was the very first pyramid built by the Ancient Egyptians. Standing nearly 62 meters tall, it was the earliest large monument built with stone, an architectural feat different in scope from the mud-brick construction of earlier mastaba royal tombs.

The Step Pyramid was originally a mastaba tomb, an underground burial chamber with ground-level rooms above to store gifts and offerings to the pharaoh. Djoser’s Royal Architect Imhotep built on the mastaba to make the Step Pyramid look like a giant staircase, so the spirit of his king could get closer to the sun during his journey in the afterlife.

8. Luxor Temple

The Luxor Temple was built around 1400 BC and was used by New Kingdom pharaohs to celebrate the Opet festival, during which the pharaoh was ritually reborn. The core of the sanctuary was built by Amenhotep III. It was later expanded with a monumental pylon and courtyard by Ramesses II, with additional reliefs and chambers added by Tutankhamun, Horemheb, and even Alexander the Great.

Notable monuments within Luxor Temple include the Colonnade of Amenhotep III, the Great Court of Ramesses II, the First Pylon, and the Standing Statue of Ramesses II. Ramesses II also erected two 25-meter red granite obelisks at the main entrance gateway. One still stands in Luxor today, while the other was transferred to France in 1833 and now stands at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

9. The Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid of Sneferu

Sneferu was the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt’s 4th Dynasty and the father of the pyramid builder Khufu. He ruled for approximately 50 years, which allowed him to build three pyramids, two of which are at Dahshur.

The Bent Pyramid got its name because architects realized they were building the pyramid too steeply and had to change the angle. Halfway up the sides, the pyramid changes shape, making it look bent. It was made of large limestone blocks and rendered with better quality smooth limestone that can still be seen on the outer walls.

His second pyramid at Dashur is called Red Pyramid because the limestone’s oxidation gives it a noticeable reddish color. It was originally covered with white limestone, but because the structure was a perfect pyramid, the sides were flat enough for robbers to walk along the surface easily and steal the white stone, leaving only the red behind.

10. The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut was constructed in the 18th Dynasty and can be found close to The Valley of The Kings on the West Bank of the Nile, below the rugged cliff face at Deir el Bahari. The mortuary temple of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (1479-1458 BC) was designed for her by Royal Architect Senenmut and dedicated to the god Amun.

The temple features three massive, stacked terraces connected by long central ramps. The linear, colonnaded design creates a visual harmony between the built structure and the natural rock face behind it. Wall carvings on the middle terrace detail a historic, peaceful trading voyage to the mysterious Land of Punt. The reliefs vividly depict imported items, including frankincense, gold, ivory, exotic animals, and living myrrh trees.

11. Karnak Temple

Karnak was the central site of worship for Amun-Ra and is one of the most holy places in Egypt. The complex was a center for festivals in the city of Thebes (now Luxor). Covering over 20 acres, the temple complex was built on, added to, and changed over the more than 2,000 years of continuous use. Rebel king Akhenaten even built a temple to Aten at Karnak; however was torn down.

The heart of the complex features a grid of 134 massive sandstone columns standing up to 21 meters high. The main west entrance features an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, each cradling a small statue of Ramesses II between its paws.

12. Temple of Philae

Located on Agilkia Island near Aswan, the Temple of Philae is an island sanctuary dedicated to Isis built during the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods to be the focus of her worship across the Mediterranean. One of its most iconic structures is an open-air pavilion surrounded by 14 massive columns. The main courtyard holds a shrine celebrating the divine birth of Horus by Isis.

Philae was one of the very last active pagan temples in Egypt, remaining open until the Christian Byzantine Emperor Justinian forcibly shut it down around AD 537. The temple walls bear the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, carved on August 24, AD 394, which is recognized by historians as the last known ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription ever written.

13. Dendara Temple

Located on the west bank of the Nile in Qena, the Dendera Temple Complex is one of Egypt’s best-preserved ancient sanctuaries, renowned for its vivid ceiling colors and astronomical reliefs. The main temple honors Hathor and features 24 massive columns topped with four-sided carved capitals depicting Hathor with bovine ears.

Extensive cleaning projects over recent years removed centuries of black soot and grime, revealing stunningly vibrant, original blue and green ceiling frescoes depicting the sky goddess Nut, constellations, and solar barques. The temple was the original home of a famous circular bas-relief sky map carved into a rooftop chapel ceiling. In 1821, French excavators removed the original stone slab and sent it to Paris, where it remains on display in the Louvre.

14. Temple of Kom Ombo

Perched on a high promontory overlooking a bend in the Nile between Edfu and Aswan, the Temple of Kom Ombo is a rare double temple with the southern half dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and the northern half to the medicine god Haroeris.

Because the riverbanks here were once infested with wild Nile crocodiles, the Egyptians worshipped them as physical manifestations of Sobek. Archaeologists unearthed hundreds of mummified crocodiles nearby. On an outer enclosure wall, a famous bas-relief depicts a set of specialized medical instruments, including scalpels, forceps, bone saws, suction cups, and a birthing chair. Many historians view this as evidence of advanced ancient Egyptian surgical practices or medical pilgrimage rituals.

15. Temple of Seti I

Located at Abydos, one of Egypt’s oldest sacred sites, the Temple of Seti I (c. 1290–1279 BC) is renowned for housing some of the finest, most delicate raised relief carvings in ancient Egyptian art. The temple features several parallel chapels dedicated to Osiris, Isis, Horus, Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah, and the deified Seti.

The temple also contains the Abydos King List. A long carved corridor features the sequential cartouches of 76 pharaohs from Menes to Seti I, intentionally omitting controversial rulers like Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Hatshepsut.

Vermeer is one of the great puzzles of Western art, mostly because so little of his life was ever written down. He left maybe three dozen paintings, no drawings, no diary, barely a personal letter, then vanished for two centuries until a French critic stumbled onto him in 1866. What followed is nearly as good as the paintings: a forger, a cache of Nazi loot, and one of the strangest courtroom defenses art history has on record. The museums with Vermeer paintings worth chasing are spread across two continents.

Vermeer’s Life in Brief

Born in Delft, the Netherlands, in 1632, Vermeer was the son of an innkeeper who dealt in art on the side. He signed on as a master with the local painters’ guild in 1653 and worked slowly, selling almost everything he created to just a single Delft collector, Pieter van Ruijven. The handy arrangement paid the bills, but it also meant that his name wasn’t known outside the city. Around the time he married, Vermeer converted to Catholicism, almost certainly to appease his wealthy mother-in-law. That mother-in-law, Maria Thins, seems to have controlled the finances in a household that eventually filled up with eleven surviving children.

Vermeer died in 1675 at just 43 years of age, ruined by the Franco-Dutch War, which had taken the Dutch art market down with it. His widow spent years afterward trying to claw out from under the debts. As van Ruijven’s collection was broken up and sold off, Vermeer’s paintings drifted apart with it, and the man himself faded out of the record almost entirely. Then, nearly 200 years on, a French critic named Théophile Thoré-Bürger, living in political exile, ran into a Vermeer in The Hague and low-key lost his head over it, spending years tracking down the rest.

The most famous painting in the whole of the Netherlands is arguably a Vermeer. It also turns out to be not quite what everyone assumes.

1. Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands

The Mauritshuis has three Vermeers, and one of them stops people dead on their tracks. Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) is not really a portrait but a tronie, a Dutch type that captured a specific kind of face rather than a specific person, so the girl actually has no name and never did. Maybe. The earring is almost certainly not a real pearl either, because a natural pearl that big and that glossy would have been absurdly rare and expensive. Best guess is glass, or simply a brilliant piece of painted illusion. The painting turned up at a Hague estate sale in 1881 and went for two guilders and thirty cents, bought by a man who clearly saw what the people running the sale had missed.

The second showstopper is View of Delft (c. 1660-1661), one of only two outdoor scenes Vermeer ever painted. Marcel Proust thought it the most beautiful painting in the world, loved it enough to send a character off to die in front of it in his novel, and nearly collapsed himself when he went to see it in 1921.

There is a third Vermeer here too, Diana and Her Nymphs (c. 1653-54), an early mythological piece from a time before he settled into the quiet interiors for which he became famous. As for View of Delft, the argument that he used a camera obscura to lay the scene out is mostly settled. How exactly he used it, though, is a fight nobody has won.

Insider Tip: The museum sits in a 17th-century palace, a short walk from the Dutch parliament. Book online, and definitely take timed entry if you are going on a weekend.

The Hague has the single most famous Vermeer, but Amsterdam has the largest collection in the country, all those muted indoor scenes that make up the bulk of what survives.

2. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Rijksmuseum has four Vermeers, and the one people cannot walk away from is undoubtedly The Milkmaid (c. 1657-1658), a small painting of a kitchen maid pouring milk into a bowl. Nothing about the subject is particularly remarkable, were it not for the fact that the play on light and color makes the whole scene incredibly lifelike. Even the thin, unbroken thread of milk leaving the jug might keep you standing still far longer than you meant to.

X-rays have turned up an earlier version hiding under the paint. There was a foot warmer on the floor, and a rack of jugs on the back wall, and Vermeer painted both of them out. Stripping the room back to the woman, the jug, and the light is such a 17th-century Photoshop move. Brilliant.

Insider Tip: Give yourself a solid three hours if you want to see the rest of the Dutch Golden Age and not only the Vermeers.

Vermeer, rediscovered: Thoré-Bürger‘s rediscovery did more than rescue Vermeer’s name. It built a market hungry for any newly found Vermeer, and that hunger was a gift to a bitter Dutch painter named Han van Meegeren, who held a real grudge against the Amsterdam art world and worked out exactly how to feed it. His scheme would eventually drag in Hermann Göring, a Nazi looting operation, and one of the great courtroom performances of the century.

3. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

In 1937, the Boijmans paid an absolute fortune for a painting that the world’s leading Vermeer expert, Abraham Bredius, had pronounced a masterpiece: The Supper at Emmaus. The thing is, it turned out to be a fake. Van Meegeren, a second-rate painter the critics had written off, had set out to forge a Vermeer, and money did not appear to be the reason, at first. The idea was to let the experts who had so swiftly rejected him swoon at the masterpiece, then reveal the hoax and watch them squirm. Van Meegeren was driven by revenge, perhaps the steadiest currency of all. The plan worked a little too well. Bredius declared it genuine, the museum bought it, and Van Meegeren, looking at the pile of cash, decided to skip the big reveal and keep going.

By 1943, Van Meegeren had sold six fake Vermeers, one of them to Hermann Göring, and traded for 137 Dutch Old Masters that Göring had looted from Jewish collections. After the war, the Dutch arrested Van Meegeren for selling a national treasure to the enemy, and his only way out was to confess that the whole thing was his own forgery. Nobody believed him, so to prove it, he was made to paint a fresh Vermeer in front of witnesses, which he promptly did. The collaboration charge fell away, fraud stuck instead, and he died of a heart attack before serving a single day in prison.

The moral of the story? Resentment might be the death of you!

A little heads-up: The museum’s main building is shut for a major renovation and is not expected to reopen until around 2029. In the meantime, the Boijmans Depot, the mirrored, bowl-shaped public store that opened in 2021, is well worth a visit entirely on its own.

Fun fact: More Vermeers hang in New York than anywhere outside the Netherlands, and the biggest group of them under one roof, five in all, belongs to the Met. Strange company to keep, given that almost nobody in America had even heard of him 150 years ago.

4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

The Met holds five Vermeers, more than any other museum anywhere, which is a funny thing to be able to say about a city that came to him late and half by accident. The one to find first is Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (c. 1662), a woman at an open window with one hand on the casement and a gilt pitcher and basin set out in front of her. It looks like nothing much is happening, which is the whole trick of it.

What makes it worth the detour is how it got here. A New York financier named Henry Marquand picked it up at a Paris gallery in 1887 for $800, a trifle even then, at a point when American collectors were chasing Italian Renaissance names and had little time for a Dutchman most had never heard of. He gave it to the Met in 1889, and it became the first Vermeer to enter an American collection. A dozen more crossed the Atlantic over the next thirty years, but this was the one that opened the door for them all.

Insider Tip: The Vermeers hang together in the European Paintings galleries on the second floor. The Met is enormous, so grab a map, or you’ll lose an afternoon to the Egyptian wing before you find them. Out-of-state visitors now pay a set admission rather than the old pay-what-you-wish, which only applies to New York State residents.

Eleven blocks south is the Frick, a much smaller and very different proposition. It was Henry Clay Frick‘s own house until 1935, which makes it an oddly fitting home for paintings that are nearly all about the insides of houses.

5. The Frick Collection, New York, USA

The Frick has three Vermeers, a substantial slice of the surviving legacy, hanging in the West Gallery alongside Rembrandts and El Greco. The one that pulls you in is Mistress and Maid (c. 1666-1667). A woman has just been handed a letter and looks up from it, caught somewhere between worry and surprise, while her maid stands waiting. There is a letter, a pause, and a look she cannot quite resolve, and the whole thing sets up a story whose ending is left hanging in the air. It was also the last painting Henry Clay Frick ever bought, in 1919, the year he died.

Frick, the steel baron who built the collection, is not exactly remembered as a soft touch. His name is tied to the brutal end of the 1892 Homestead strike, when Pinkerton agents shot striking workers at his plant. That a collection assembled by that man now holds some of the gentlest and loveliest paintings ever made is one of the sharpest ironies in art history.

Insider Tip: The Frick is at 1 East 70th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, and reopened in 2025 after a long renovation. Timed tickets are required, so book online.

Washington has three real Vermeers, plus a fourth that the National Gallery decided in 2022 was painted not by him but by someone in his orbit. What IS IT about this guy?

6. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA

The National Gallery has Woman Holding a Balance (c. 1664), a woman at a table holding a small set of scales. Yet, the scales are empty, the one detail that has kept scholars arguing for over a century. People long assumed she was weighing gold or pearls, but the pans hold nothing. On the wall behind her hangs a painting of the Last Judgment, of souls being weighed at the end of time. Whether Vermeer meant that echo, a woman weighing nothing beneath a picture of everything being weighed, or whether it is simply how the room happened to be furnished, is anybody’s guess.

The painting spent most of the 19th century in private hands in Paris, surfacing every now and then at auction under whatever name was convenient, before someone correctly identified it as a Vermeer. It came to the US. The famous Widener Collection was given to the gallery in 1942. Something worth knowing on your way through: a fourth painting hung for decades as a Vermeer, but that was quietly downgraded in 2022 and attributed to someone in his studio, which is a pretty neat reminder of how slippery the attributions continue to be.

Ironically enough, not one original Vermeer is left in the city where every single one of them was painted. Delft itself, though, has changed less than you would think, and the spot he painted View of Delft from is still right there. Delft is about an hour from Amsterdam by train and folds neatly into a trip to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, only 15 minutes further down the same line. Run it as Amsterdam to Delft to The Hague, and you will cover more Vermeers per mile than anywhere else on the planet.

7. Vermeer Centrum Delft, Delft, Netherlands

It might seem ironic that this aptly named center holds no single original painting, yet it might turn out to be the very best museum for Vermeer fans. The Centrum gives you the one thing the big museums cannot: a real sense of how the paintings were actually made. There are full-size reproductions, plain-language explanations of the camera obscura research, and a close look at Vermeer’s technique. It also points you toward the Hooikade, the quay from where he painted View of Delft, where the Nieuwe Kerk tower still stands, and the waterline sits about where it always did.

Insider Tip: Pair the Centrum with a short walk to the Oude Kerk, where Vermeer is buried. He ended up in his mother-in-law’s family crypt because there was no money for a grave of his own, and the stone that marks the spot today wasn’t laid until 1975.

Ancient cities are windows into civilizations that shaped the world. From bustling Silk Road capitals to royal medieval metropolises, these cities reveal centuries of culture, architecture, and history. Some have been abandoned, others repurposed, but all endure in stone, street, and temple. Today, visitors can walk through these remarkable sites and experience the lives of the people who built them. Here are ten ancient cities you can still visit today.

1. Merv, Turkmenistan, c. 6th Century BC

Nestled in Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert, Merv stands as a testament to over 4,000 years of human history. Once a vibrant hub on the Silk Road, it flourished under various empires, notably reaching its zenith in the 12th century as the Seljuk Empire’s capital.

Today, the State Historical and Cultural Park “Ancient Merv” preserves its rich legacy. Visitors can explore the Sultan Sanjar Mausoleum, an architectural marvel commemorating the revered Seljuk ruler.

The Great Kyz Kala, with its distinctive corrugated walls, offers insight into the region’s unique construction techniques. Additionally, the ancient fortresses of Erk Kala and Gyaur Kala provide glimpses into Merv’s strategic significance through the ages.

2. Hattusa, Turkey, c. 1600 BC

Hattusa, the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, was established around 1600 BC in what is now central Turkey. Once a major power in the Bronze Age, the city controlled vast territories and rivaled Egypt in diplomacy, warfare, and culture. It was a hub of administration, trade, and religious activity until its decline around 1200 BC.

You can explore its fortified walls, which once enclosed an advanced urban center. The Lion Gate, with its still-standing stone sculptures, marks the entrance to what was once a thriving metropolis. The Great Temple, a central site of Hittite worship, provides insight into the empire’s religious traditions.

Just outside the main city, Yazılıkaya, an open-air rock sanctuary, displays intricate carvings of Hittite gods, offering a rare glimpse into their mythology.

3. Ani, Turkey, c. 5th Century AD

Ani, once a flourishing medieval capital, now lies in quiet isolation along Turkey’s border with Armenia. Founded in the 5th century AD, it grew into a formidable city under the Bagratid Armenian kings, reaching its peak in the 10th and 11th centuries.

At its height, Ani was a center of trade and culture, rivaling Constantinople and Cairo with its wealth and architectural marvels. Today, the echoes of its past remain in the skeletal remains of its churches, walls, and streets.

What makes Ani remarkable is its extensive collection of medieval Armenian architecture, preserved despite centuries of abandonment. The Cathedral of Ani, designed by the famed architect Trdat, still stands with its massive dome partially intact. The city walls, once an imposing defense against invaders, stretch along the landscape, giving visitors a sense of the grandeur that once defined Ani.

4. Thanjavur, India, c. 4th Century AD

Thanjavur, one of India’s most historic cities, is not a forgotten ruin or a relic of a lost civilization. It is a city that has carried its legacy forward for over 1,600 years. Established in the 4th century AD, it became the beating heart of Tamil culture under the Chola dynasty, which ruled much of South India. Unlike other ancient cities frozen in time, Thanjavur remains vibrant, blending its deep historical roots with the rhythms of modern life.

At its core stands the Brihadeeswarar Temple, a masterpiece of Chola architecture commissioned by Rajaraja I in the 11th century. Towering over the city, its 66-meter vimana (tower) is crowned by a massive granite capstone, a feat of engineering that continues to puzzle historians. Inside, elaborate frescoes and inscriptions narrate centuries of devotion and power.

Beyond the temple, Thanjavur’s Royal Palace Complex houses a vast collection of artifacts, including ancient scripts and statues, offering a window into its regal past. Thanjavur is also the birthplace of the Tanjore painting tradition, home to skilled artisans crafting veena instruments, and a hub for Carnatic music.

5. Byblos, Lebanon, c. 5000 BC

Byblos is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. Founded around 5000 BC, it has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, from the Phoenicians to the Romans and beyond. This was the city that gave the world the alphabet. The Phoenicians developed early writing systems here that influenced Greek and Latin scripts.

Strolling through the Byblos Archaeological Site, you’ll see remnants of civilizations stacked upon one another: Neolithic dwellings, Phoenician temples, a Roman amphitheater, and a Crusader-era castle that still stands watch over the Mediterranean. The harbor, once filled with Phoenician ships laden with cedar wood, is now lined with cafés and fishing boats, offering a rare chance to experience history in motion.

6. Nisa, Turkmenistan, c. 3rd Century BC

Nisa doesn’t have the grand fame of Rome or Athens, but what it lacks in renown, it makes up for in significance. Founded in the 3rd century BC, it was the first capital of the Parthian Empire, a civilization that rivaled the might of the Romans. Nisa was once a royal stronghold, home to lavish palaces, towering temples, and vast wine cellars storing the empire’s finest.

Unlike many ancient cities that sprawled outward, Nisa was built as a fortress. The mudbrick walls, thick and imposing, still stand in defiance of time. Within them, archaeologists have uncovered priceless ivory rhytons: elaborate drinking vessels adorned with Greek-inspired motifs, proving that Nisa was not just a military center but also a melting pot of cultures.

The city’s fire temples, once blazing with eternal flames, hint at the deep spiritual traditions of the Parthians. Today, Nisa is quiet, its ruins softened by the desert winds.

7. Aizanoi, Turkey, c. 3rd Century BC

If Aizanoi were anywhere else, it would be world-famous. But history is strange like that; some places get forgotten, no matter how grand they once were. Founded in the 3rd century BC, this city thrived under Greek, then Roman rule, yet somehow slipped through the cracks of time. Now, it sits in the Turkish countryside, barely touched, its ruins more real, more raw than the polished sites tourists usually flock to.

At its heart stands the Temple of Zeus, its columns still defying gravity. But Aizanoi isn’t just about one temple. This place had it all, an 8000-seat theater right next to a colossal stadium, a combination found nowhere else in the ancient world. It had the oldest known stock exchange, where traders literally set prices in stone. And the Roman bridges are still standing and still in use.

8. Timgad, Algeria, c. 100 AD

Established around 100 CE by Emperor Trajan, this Roman colony in modern-day Algeria was a textbook example of urban planning. Wide, straight streets form a perfect grid, intersecting at right angles like a life-size blueprint of Rome’s ambition. It wasn’t a military outpost, nor a fortress. It was a city built for comfort, luxury, and, of course, Roman order.

The Arch of Trajan, still standing tall, once welcomed merchants, scholars, and politicians. The forum, once alive with debates and deals, is eerily silent now, but its layout still speaks of Roman efficiency. The theater, with seating for 3,500 spectators, is so well-preserved that performances could be held there today. And there’s a Roman library, its stone shelves still hinting at the scrolls that once lined them.

Timgad is proof of how Rome’s reach extended far beyond Italy. Sand buried the city for centuries, preserving it better than any museum ever could. Now, it’s back in the open, a near-perfect snapshot of a world that once was.

9. Gerasa, Jordan, c. 331 BC

Most ancient cities crumble, their streets reduced to dust, their monuments looted or lost. But Gerasa, now known as Jerash, is different. Founded around 331 BC, this city somehow survived conquests, earthquakes, and centuries of abandonment, only to reemerge as one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities in the world.

Unlike ruins that require imagination to fill in the gaps, Gerasa still feels like a city. Its colonnaded streets stretch into the horizon, flanked by towering Corinthian columns that haven’t fallen. The Oval Plaza, an architectural marvel of symmetry and balance, remains as grand as the day it was built.

The Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the city’s patron goddess, still stands, its massive pillars daring time to break them. Even the chariot-racing hippodrome is intact enough to host reenactments of Roman spectacles.

What makes Gerasa different is that it never disappeared. It wasn’t buried like Pompeii, nor lost to time like Babylon. It simply waited, its stones standing firm, its roads still leading somewhere.

10. Sukhothai, Thailand, c. 1238 AD

Sukhothai is where Thai identity took shape. Founded in 1238 AD, it was the first capital of the Kingdom of Sukhothai, laying the foundations for Thai art, language, and culture.

What’s left today? Not a crowded metropolis, but a sprawling open-air museum. The Sukhothai Historical Park is a place where 700-year-old Buddha statues still sit in quiet meditation, where lotus-filled moats reflect the outlines of once-mighty stupas.

Wat Mahathat, the kingdom’s spiritual core, still dominates the landscape, while the massive seated Buddha of Wat Si Chum seems to watch over everything with an expression of timeless calm.

Ancient Cities You Can Still Visit Today (Quick Reference)

Caravaggio is widely considered one of the most influential painters in history, an artist who defined his era. He also led a tumultuous life, killing a man in a street brawl, which led him to spend the rest of his short life on the run, painting furiously as he went. An uncompromising visionary, Caravaggio upset the very clergy that commissioned his work, reimagining the most sacred of scenes in unorthodox ways.

The best museums with Caravaggio paintings are scattered across six countries, holding the roughly 80 works he left behind.

Caravaggio’s Life in Brief

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was born in Milan in 1571. After training under a competent but unremarkable Milanese painter, he arrived in Rome around 1592 and swiftly found patronage under Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. Under his patron, who gave him lodgings and an introduction, the young Caravaggio moved from small secular paintings for private collectors to major church commissions within just a few years. What set him apart from the start was his use of light, a single raking source that made skin look alive, and sacred subjects look human in ways that delighted some and unsettled others. Caravaggio’s use of light and the contrast between light and dark (chiaroscuro, in Italian) was a game-changer in the Baroque art world.

It is around this time that his hot-blooded temper began to show. By the early 1600s, Caravaggio’s police record ran to multiple assaults, illegal weapons charges, and at least one incident we know of involving a plate of artichokes being thrown at a waiter. But it was the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni in 1606, a man Caravaggio had several physical run-ins with, that forced the talented painter into a life on the run. In his four years of exile, which saw him flee first to Naples, then Malta, and eventually Sicily, Caravaggio would continue to paint unabated. He lobbied all his major contacts for a papal pardon while in exile, his plea eventually heard in 1610.

To kickstart your tour of museums with Caravaggio paintings, it might help to first understand what this young artist was capable of and how the Catholic Church both craved and struggled with his work. To this end, the very best place to start is no museum at all, but a small chapel just a few minutes’ walk from the Pantheon in Rome.

1. San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, Italy

The Contarelli Chapel, a working church, holds three Caravaggio paintings that one could easily claim “made” his name. The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600) shows the moment Christ summons a tax collector from his counting table, and just about everything about it is enchanting: the tax collector wearing contemporary Roman clothes, a room with no discernible holiness about it at all, and a single beam of light carrying much of the painting’s meaning. The clergy were not especially delighted with the piece, but they accepted it nonetheless.

The third chapel painting, Saint Matthew and the Angel, fared even worse. Caravaggio’s first version showed Matthew as a rough peasant with dirty feet, the angel practically guiding his illiterate hand through the gospel text. This one was initially rejected outright, deemed far too undignified by the clergy. He then painted a tamer replacement for the wall, while the rejected original made its way into the collection of Berlin’s Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, where it was destroyed in 1945 during World War II and is now known only through photographs.

Insider Tip: Entry is free, but the paintings are lit by coin-operated lights, so bring a couple of euro coins. Note that the church, like most things in Rome, closes for lunch.

The start of a brilliant (albeit short-lived) career: The Contarelli commission launched Caravaggio into the top tier of Roman painters, and more commissions followed in quick succession. But so did trouble, of course, and so did the paintings that the Church found a little too edgy to keep. Caravaggio would then choose to make smaller, more personal work for private collectors during his early years in Rome.

2. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

The Death of the Virgin (c. 1604) was one of those pieces commissioned for a Roman church and rejected almost as soon as it was delivered. Caravaggio had painted the Virgin Mary lying down, bloated, her feet toward the viewer, and surrounded by apostles who looked more like dock workers than disciples. The rumor mill began almost immediately, with people saying that the model who posed for the painting was a local prostitute. The Carmelite friars who had commissioned the painting, flushed to no end, promptly sent it back.

What happened next says a great deal about how the art world actually worked, and undoubtedly still does. Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, who recognized the painting’s value, advised the Duke of Mantua to buy it, and it went on brief public display in Rome before leaving the city for good. Contemporary accounts record that painters queued to see it in those final days. The piece eventually passed into the French royal collection and has been at the Louvre ever since, nearly four meters (13 feet) tall and as unapologetic as the day it was rejected.

Caravaggio on the run: The killing that changed the course of Caravaggio’s life happened on May 28, 1606, during what appears to have been a brawl at a tennis match. Ranuccio Tomassoni died of his wounds, and Caravaggio fled Rome that same night, with a capital sentence issued against him that gave any citizen of Rome the legal right to kill him on sight. He never managed to return. The four years of exile that followed eventually took him to Malta, where the Knights of St John gave him the largest commission of his career, the piece you ought to see next.

3. Co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta, Malta

The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608) is the only painting Caravaggio ever signed, and he chose to do so in the painted blood pooling beneath the Baptist’s severed head, a detail you can catch if you stand close enough. At roughly 3.7 by 5.2 meters (13 by 17 feet), it is also the largest painting he ever made, and it hangs in the Oratory of the Co-Cathedral of St John in Valletta, in a room that was purpose-built to house it.

Less than a year before, the Knights had made him one of their own, giving him an actual knighthood, which was no small turnaround for a man with a death sentence waiting back in Rome. It did not last. Within months, he was back in prison, this time in Malta on a charge the records never quite spell out, before escaping by rope and fleeing to Sicily. Nobody has ever worked out how he got over the walls. The Knights had the last word, though. That December, they gathered in this same oratory, in front of the painting he had made for them, and threw him out of the order as “a rotten and fetid limb.”

4. Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy

Of the six Caravaggios in the Galleria Borghese, the most arresting is David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610), painted during the artist’s final months while he was desperately seeking a papal pardon. Many scholars believe the severed head is a self-portrait, making the work feel less like a biblical scene than a grim act of self-reckoning. Nearby hangs Boy with a Basket of Fruit (one of his earliest Roman paintings), which highlights just how much his style evolved over less than two decades. The collection also includes Saint Jerome Writing, the Madonna dei Palafrenieri, and the Young Sick Bacchus, giving a rare overview of Caravaggio’s career in one fell swoop.

The collection itself has a colorful history of its own accord. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the pope’s nephew and one of Rome’s most aggressive and ruthless collectors, acquired masterpieces with a determination that occasionally strayed into outright coercion. The result is one of the finest art collections in Italy, assembled by methods that would raise many an eyebrow today.

Wherever Caravaggio went, trouble followed: By late 1609, Caravaggio was back in Naples for the second time, having been forced to flee Sicily as well. The papal pardon was reportedly close to being issued. Then he was attacked outside a tavern, badly enough that some accounts suggest he was nearly killed, possibly by agents of the Tomassoni family looking for revenge. Caravaggio did survive the attack, and he returned to painting at once.

5. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy

The Flagellation of Christ (1607) belongs to Caravaggio’s years in Naples: three torturers closing in on Christ at the column, most of the canvas given over to darkness. Tommaso de Franchis commissioned it for his family chapel in San Domenico Maggiore, and there it stayed for something like 350 years, written up in the city guidebooks and gawked at by travelers. The worries around safety and conservation finally saw the piece moved up the hill to the Capodimonte in 1972. It is plausible that Caravaggio may have come back to it, since some believe he reworked the picture as late as 1610, in the last months of his life.

Even though the painting has moved on, the church itself is still worth a look while you are in Naples. For a Caravaggio that never left its original setting, you want the nearby Pio Monte della Misericordia, where his Seven Works of Mercy still hang in the spot it was made for. For the Capodimonte itself, allow at least half a day. The museum occupies a royal palace in a large park above the city, and the collection extends well beyond Caravaggio.

Caravaggio died in July 1610 on a beach at Porto Ercole, after being mistakenly detained there while his boat, carrying several of his paintings, went on without him. He fell ill, developed a fever, and died within days, just three days short of his pardon. A life and a talent cut short way too soon, yet an influence that is still felt in the art world over four centuries later.

6. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Of the three Caravaggios in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, the most compelling is the Madonna of the Rosary (1606–7), painted in Naples in the weeks immediately after the killing and his flight from Rome. It was commissioned but never delivered to its original patron, and ended up on the open market, where a group of Flemish painters (among them Rubens) joined forces to buy it and donate it to a church in Antwerp, specifically so that other northern painters would have the chance to study it.

Few stories capture Caravaggio’s reputation better. He was a wanted man living in exile, yet some of the most important painters in northern Europe were willing to pool their money so others could study his work. The painting eventually made its way into the Habsburg collection and has been in Vienna ever since, and knowing the circumstances in which it was made really does change how it looks when you stand in front of it.

From its inception in 1299, when Sultan Osman I founded an empire that would grow to cover vast swaths of North Africa, Europe, and West Asia. But Constantinople posed an issue. This vast, heavily defended city on the banks of the Bosphorus stood between the Ottomans and their expansion to the west.

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, led by Mehmed II, on May 29, 1453, marked not only the end of Byzantine Constantinople, but the end of an empire which had begun in Rome some 15 centuries earlier.

The Significance of the Fall of the Theodosian Walls

The siege of 1453 wasn’t the first Ottoman attempt to penetrate the walls of Constantinople. Ottoman armies had laid siege to the city unsuccessfully in 1391, between 1394 and 1402, and then again in 1411 and 1422.

But Constantinople had been designed to be impenetrable. Protected by the towering Theodosian Walls, at their highest point standing 12 meters (39 feet) tall, by medieval standards, Constantinople truly was impregnable.

The 1453 Conquest of Constantinople

On April 6, 1453, a 70,000-strong Ottoman taskforce surrounded Constantinople. Initially, they focused on Byzantine strongholds outside of the city, as a chain across Golden Horn Bay prevented access to the city itself. After three weeks, the Ottoman army dragged their boats overland to breach Constantinople from the north. Alas, still, the Theodosian Walls held the attackers at bay.

The Ottomans’ initial attempts to breach the walls were in vain. When traditional assaults by land led to a significant number of casualties, the assaulting Ottomans changed their tactics and attempted to tunnel underneath the walls. Their success was short-lived.

On May 23, just a week after construction of the first tunnel had begun, Byzantine forces captured and tortured two Turkish officers who divulged the location of the remaining tunnels.

How Cannons & Gunpowder Marked the End of Medieval Warfare

With traditional methods and an attempt at negotiations failing, Sultan Mehmed II had one final weapon in his arsenal, a weapon which the Byzantines had been offered the previous year but had been unable to afford.

The Basilica cannon, better known as the Great Turkish Cannon, was designed in 1452 by a Hungarian engineer named Orban. Persuaded by Orban’s claims that his new cannon was strong enough to blast through the walls of Babylon, Mehmed II saw it as the potential solution to bring down the Theodosian Walls. Having provided Orban with the materials and a not insignificant salary, the cannon was built at Adrianople (now Edirne, on the Turkish-Greek border) in just three months.

In the early hours of May 29, Mehmed’s army launched its final assault on Constantinople. Initially focusing on one of the weakest sections of the walls, the first to gain entrance to the city were quickly pushed back by the defending Byzantine troops. But Mehmed had kept his best men back for the final push. The first launch of their grand new cannon left the defenders in chaos; many Venetian and Genoese fled to their ships, Greek soldiers ran for cover, and those Genoese who had been unable to escape sought shelter in the winding passageways of Galata.

Constantine and his own soldiers were left alone to defend the city. The emperor himself led one final charge against the Ottomans, but it was to no avail. He and his men fought to the death, and the emperor himself may have been decapitated. Another version of events, the account of a Venetian ship’s doctor, Nicolo Barbaro, has it that Constantine hanged himself as soon as the Ottomans breached the walls.

Constantine’s fate aside, the Queen of Cities, the centerpiece of the once great Byzantine Empire, had been taken by Mehmed’s men in less than 12 hours in this final assault. The Ottoman Empire had a new capital, one from which it would rule until it too met its end in 1922.

Why the Conversion of the Hagia Sophia Signaled a New Religious Era

Fascinating as the events of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 were, as is so often the case, what followed is of far greater significance. The Ottoman Empire was, and remained until its end, Islamic. The Byzantine Empire, born from the Roman Empire, was Christian. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople gave rise to a Byzantine to Ottoman transition which far transcended a change of ruler.

There’s a common misconception amongst visitors to Istanbul that the Hagia Sophia is a purpose-built mosque. Istanbul’s other iconic mosque, the Sultanahmet Camii (or Blue Mosque), which stands adjacent to the Hagia Sophia, was built as a mosque between 1609 and 1617, but the Hagia Sophia itself is a relic from the Byzantine era.

When you stop and examine the building a little more closely, the design of the dome is a key indicator that what is now one of the world’s most renowned mosques was, in fact, built as an Eastern Orthodox church. The minarets on its periphery were added after the end of the Byzantine Empire. One, no longer surviving, example was built shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, with the remaining minarets being completed during the 16th century.

The religious status of the Hagia Sopfia is something that, even today, presents as a controversial issue. With the birth of the new, post-Ottoman Turkish Republic in 1923 came a shift from Islamist policies to a secular constitution. With that, the Republic’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had the Hagia Sophia converted into a museum in the mid-1930s. In 2020, the Hagia Sophia regained its status as a mosque, one of many acts of the current Erdogan administration dubbed by critics as an attempt at Islamifying the Turkish state once more.

The Rebuilding of a City After the Ottoman Conquest

By the time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror’s toppling of Byzantine Constantinople, the city was a shadow of its former glory. At its peak in the mid-6th century, Constantinople was home to around 500,000 people. By 1453, that figure had fallen to between 40,000 and 50,000. Naturally, this decline in population had a disastrous impact on Constantinople’s economy.

The Rise of the Grand Bazaar Created a Central Point for Global Trade

Constantinople had long been a major part of the ancient Silk Road trade route. As the Byzantine Empire’s capital, it took on a key role in controlling trade to the west. Constantinople was a final trading post on the northern Silk Road route, with goods destined for the city passing through Ottoman-controlled Anatolia.

When Constantinople fell, that trade began to dwindle. Western powers looked for new routes to and from the East. Recognizing the impact this could have on Constantinople, Mehmed II developed plans to reignite that trade. In an attempt to broaden Constantinople’s, and with it the Ottoman Empire’s, economic prospects, he initiated the building of a large covered market where traders from the Silk Road and merchants from the west could converge.

The initial Grand Bazaar was, in scale, nothing compared to what we see today. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, the market grew, being extended and combined with adjoining markets. By the early 17th century, the Grand Bazaar took its current form, home to 3,000 traders.

To this day, the Grand Bazaar is one of the world’s largest covered markets, playing host to 4,000 shops and as many as 400,000 visitors every day.

From Byzantine Law to Ottoman Administration

Just as the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople led to a religious transformation, the end of the Byzantine Empire paved the way for a transformation of the city’s legal system. The old Roman ways of the Byzantine era were replaced with those of the Ottoman Empire.

The Implementation of the Millet System

One of the key challenges faced by Mehmed II after the conquest of Constantinople was to accommodate its religiously diverse population. As the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the seat of its Ecumenical Patriarchate, despite the fall of Constantinople, Christianity would continue to be a major religion. The city was also seeing a rapidly increasing Jewish population, alongside Muslim arrivals from Anatolia.

Mehmed’s solution was to develop a legal system that would allow members of religious communities to be held accountable to their own laws. Now referred to as “millets,” though the name wasn’t coined until some centuries later, independent courts were established to preside over each community.

To this day, many former Ottoman countries continue to employ modern versions of the Millet system. A number of Arab nations hold Muslim citizens accountable to Sharia law, while Christian and Jewish populations follow civil law. In Europe, only Greece continues to adopt a limited Millet-style approach, with Muslims having the option of Sharia courts presiding over family legal matters.

How Mehmed II Adopted the Title of Caesar of Rome

While Mehmed the Conqueror is Sultan Mehmed II’s most well-known moniker, following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, he adopted the self-styled title of “Caesar of Rome.” With the fall of Rome in 476 and Byzantium’s prior emergence as Constantinople, the latter had been the seat of Roman power for almost 1,000 years.

In Mehmed’s eyes, he who ruled Constantinople ruled the Roman Empire. Of course, this was far from the reality of the situation. By the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine Empire had been reduced to a fragment of its former self, controlling little more than the city itself and the Peloponnese.

There can be no doubt that the fall of the Theodosian Walls marked a major milestone in the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of the West. But what it meant in terms of realistic territorial gain should not be exaggerated. By the time of Mehmed’s death in 1481, the empire stretched no further than the Balkans in the west and the Crimean Peninsula to the north.

Ancient Egypt unfolded across more than 30 dynasties from around 3100 BC to the Roman conquest in 30 BC, a span of roughly three millennia. Its tombs, temples, and papyri have been excavated, preserved, and dispersed to museums across three continents over the past two centuries, which means seeing the full picture really does require visiting more than just Cairo. The museums below cover the entire arc of Egyptian dynasties, from Predynastic figurines through to the Ptolemaic Era, with particular emphasis on the famous Old, Middle, and New kingdoms that produced the pharaohs almost everyone has heard of.

1. Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), Giza, Egypt

More than 30 years after its plan was first announced, the Grand Egyptian Museum finally opened to the public in November, 2025. It is the world’s largest archaeological museum dedicated to a single civilization, showcasing more than 100,000 artifacts. The twelve galleries are arranged chronologically, ranging from prehistoric Egypt to the Greco-Roman period.

The Grand Atrium alone spans 10,000 square meters (more than 100,000 square feet), while the Grand Staircase holds more than 60 monumental artifacts, culminating with a jaw-dropping panoramic view of the Giza Pyramids framed through a triangular window. The undisputed centerpiece is the Tutankhamun Gallery, which displays all 5,398 objects from the boy-king’s tomb together for the very first time since Howard Carter discovered them in 1922. His famous gold funerary mask sits behind bulletproof glass, getting the level of protection it deserves.

2. Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square, Cairo

Even now that the gleaming new GEM is open, the original Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square remains an essential stop for anyone interested in Egyptian history. Opened in 1902, in a striking pink neoclassical building designed by French architect Marcel Dourgnon, it’s the oldest archaeological museum in the entire Middle East and once held the largest collection of pharaonic antiquities anywhere in the world, with over 170,000 items at its peak.

With the entire Tutankhamun collection now moved to GEM and the Royal Mummies have relocated to NMEC across town, the Tahrir museum has shifted focus to its remaining strengths. These include old kingdom statuary, middle kingdom sarcophagi, the spectacular collections from the tombs of Yuya and Thuya (Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents), and the artifacts unearthed from the royal tombs at Tanis.

The building itself, with its soaring central atrium and wonderfully old-fashioned 19th-century display cases packed to bursting, remains a kind of museum of museum history as much as a museum of Egypt. There’s an old-world charm to it that the slick new GEM simply can’t replicate.

3. National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), Cairo

Opened in stages from 2017 and fully inaugurated in April 2021 with the unforgettable Pharaohs’ Golden Parade, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization sits in the Fustat district of Old Cairo. Unlike the other Cairo museums, NMEC traces the entire history of Egypt from prehistoric times right through to the present day, rather than stopping abruptly at the Roman conquest in 30 BC.

The undisputed showpiece of the museum is the spooky Royal Mummies Hall, where 22 mummies (18 kings and four queens) rest in dimly-lit, temperature-controlled cases. They include some of the most famous pharaohs ever to rule, like Seti I, Ramesses II, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep I, and the unidentified “Younger Lady” now widely believed to be Tutankhamun’s mother. Each mummy has an information panel showing the latest CT scans and DNA analyses, which adds a fascinating modern science aspect to the experience.

The wider galleries cover dynastic Egyptian history alongside Coptic, Islamic, and modern periods, giving a sense of cultural coherence that purely pharaonic museums tend to miss completely.

4. Museo Egizio, Turin (Italy)

Founded in 1824 by King Charles Felix of Savoy, Turin’s Museo Egizio is the world’s oldest museum dedicated entirely to ancient Egyptian culture and holds the largest collection of Egyptian treasures outside Cairo devoted exclusively to the civilization. Its roughly 40,000 artifacts are spread across four exhibition floors, and recently enjoyed a major expansion.

The Statuario, the museum’s grand double-height hall of pharaonic statues, has been a fixture since 1824 and was beautifully redesigned by Oscar-winning Italian set designer Dante Ferretti for the 2006 Winter Olympics. The intact tomb of the architect Kha and his wife Merit, excavated by Ernesto Schiaparelli (uncle of the famous fashion designer and an avid Egyptologist) at Deir el-Medina in 1906, is a rare example of a non-royal burial found completely undisturbed, with all its furniture, clothing, food offerings, and personal possessions still in place.

The small rock-cut temple of Ellesiya, gifted by Egypt in gratitude for Italy’s role in the rescue of the Nubian monuments in the 1960s, sits fully reassembled in its own dedicated gallery. The museum also holds three full copies of the Book of the Dead, one of which is the oldest known complete version anywhere.

While Egypt often campaigns for the return of its ancient treasures spread around the world, it has never requested that any be returned from Turin. So respected is the collection in Italy that the two countries collaborate closely on its upkeep. It really is, by far, the best museum for Egyptian dynasties outside Egypt.

5. The British Museum, London

The British Museum holds roughly 100,000 objects related to ancient Egypt, the largest such collection anywhere outside Egypt itself. Best of all, entry is free, and the famous Egyptian sculpture gallery is one of the very first spaces most visitors reach after coming through the main Great Russell Street entrance.

The Rosetta Stone is the most-visited single object in the entire museum. It was found by French soldiers near the town of Rosetta in 1799 and transferred to British possession under the 1801 Treaty of Alexandria. Its trilingual inscription (in hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian, and ancient Greek) finally allowed French scholar Jean-François Champollion to crack the code of hieroglyphs in 1822, opening up 3,000 years of Egyptian history to the modern world.

Other major highlights include the colossal bust of Ramesses II, the elegant Gayer-Anderson Cat (a bronze sculpture from around 664 to 332 BC), the painted wooden coffin of Henutmehyt, and extensive holdings of papyri, jewelry, and shabtis. Egypt has been formally requesting the return of the Rosetta Stone for years, so far without success.

6. The Louvre, Paris

The Louvre’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities was founded back in 1826 (by none other than Champollion himself, the man who cracked the hieroglyphic code) and is one of the largest in the world, with approximately 50,000 objects displayed across two separate visitor circuits: a thematic tour of daily life on the ground floor and a chronological tour of pharaonic history on the floor above.

The Great Sphinx of Tanis, carved from striking pink granite around 1900 BC and associated with several New Kingdom pharaohs over the centuries, guards the entrance to the galleries. The famous Seated Scribe (Old Kingdom, around 2500 BC) remains startlingly lifelike after 4,500 years, with his inlaid eyes seeming to track viewers around the gallery.

Other major pieces include the Dendera zodiac ceiling (a beautifully detailed Ptolemaic sky map), the gold statuette of Queen Karomama, and a vast collection of Amarna-period art from the strange reign of Akhenaten, including fragments salvaged from his short-lived royal palace at Tell el-Amarna.

7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian Art department holds approximately 26,000 objects dating from the Paleolithic through to the Roman Period. The astonishing aspect is that nearly all of them are on public display across 40 dedicated galleries on the museum’s first floor. Its single most dramatic object is the Temple of Dendur, a complete Roman-era sandstone temple built around 15 BC, under Emperor Augustus.

The temple was gifted to the United States by Egypt in 1965 in recognition of generous American aid during the UNESCO Nubian monuments rescue effort, and was painstakingly reassembled stone by stone in the glass-walled Sackler Wing overlooking Central Park in 1978.

Other highlights include the funerary assemblage of Meketre (a 12th Dynasty chancellor) with its remarkable painted wooden models of his estate, the gold jewelry of Princess Sithathoryunet, a Middle Kingdom blue faience hippopotamus affectionately nicknamed William (the museum’s unofficial mascot), and a full architectural model of the tomb of Perneb. The department also holds one of the finest collections of Amarna-period objects anywhere outside Cairo, ideal for anyone fascinated by Akhenaten’s revolutionary reign.

There’s an old adage that every road leads to Rome. At its height, Rome’s reach was so vast that no single modern museum could hope to hold all its material legacy. Some of the best museums for Roman history are in Rome (shockingly enough), but equally important collections sit in Naples, London, and a handful of provincial capitals across the former Empire. Here are the ones you shouldn’t miss.

1. Capitoline Museums, Rome

The Capitoline Museums have a strong claim to being the oldest public museum in the world. They occupy two Renaissance palaces on Piazza del Campidoglio, the square designed by Michelangelo.

The Capitoline Wolf is the symbol of the museum and the mascot of Rome itself. So revered is she that local soccer team AS Roma puts her on the team crest, and we all know how fanatical Italians get about their soccer. For centuries, the bronze she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus was assumed to be Etruscan, dating to around 500 BC. Then in 2006, restorer Anna Maria Carruba published her finding: the wolf had been cast in a single piece using a method medieval bronzeworkers favored, not the segmented Etruscan technique. Radiocarbon dating two years later placed her somewhere between the 11th and 12th centuries. Roman officials were not amused. The twins, by the way, were added in the 15th century.

The other piece worth seeking out is the original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (the one in the piazza is a replica). It survived the Middle Ages only because early Christians mistook the pagan emperor for Constantine, the first Christian ruler, and refused to melt it down for scrap. Almost every other Imperial bronze equestrian got recycled into church doors or cannons. Marcus, ironically, a Stoic philosopher under whom waves of Christian persecution were carried out, owes his survival to a case of mistaken identity that lasted a thousand years.

2. National Roman Museum (Palazzo Massimo), Rome

The Museo Nazionale Romano is spread across four sites in central Rome. If you don’t have time to explore them all, opt for arguably the most important: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme near Termini Station. The upper floor recreates three rooms lifted from Roman villas (including the famous painted garden from Empress Livia‘s villa at Prima Porta).

But the piece to seek out is the Hellenistic Greek sculpture, the Boxer at Rest, a 1st-century BC bronze recovered in 1885 from the Quirinal Hill. He’s slumped on a rock after a fight, face battered and bumpy cauliflower ears unmistakable. His hands are still wrapped in the leather-and-metal caestus gloves that made Roman boxing closer to bare-knuckle slaughter than sport.

A combined ticket covers all four site over three days, which is enough time to do them all justice.

3. National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN)

MANN holds the world’s finest collection of artifacts pulled from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and all the other cities buried by Vesuvius in AD 79. The Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun (around 1.5 million tesserae depicting Alexander smashing into Darius III at the Battle of Issus) is the most famous Roman piece. But the room that tells you most about Roman life is the Secret Cabinet.

When the Bourbon excavators started pulling phalluses and brothel frescoes out of Pompeii (along with garden statuary depicting the god Pan getting frisky with a goat), the royal family hid everything in a locked room. Access required written permission, and the only visitors allowed had to be men of “mature age and respected morals.” Women weren’t allowed in, period. Access remained heavily restricted under Fascism and only fully opened to the general public in 2000. The collection makes clear that the Romans had a much more relaxed relationship with their bodies than the Victorians, who eventually inherited their stuff.

Insider Tip: Visit MANN before Pompeii. Most of the finest pieces were moved to Naples for safekeeping, so the ruins can feel empty or almost meaningless unless you’ve seen the museum first. Naples is a 70-minute high-speed train from Rome’s Termini Station and potentially doable as a day trip if you don’t mind an early start.

4. The British Museum, London

The British Museum’s Roman collections span the breadth of the empire, from the Iberian Peninsula to Syria to Britannia. Why do the Brits have so much? Having an empire of their own helped, as did two centuries of well-funded archaeological digs, and having the often dubbed world’s first national museum (opened in 1759) with shelves itching to be filled.

The Portland Vase, a cameo-glass marvel from around AD 25 that inspired Wedgwood, is the most famous Roman piece on display. But the gossip-worthy one is the Warren Cup, a Roman silver drinking cup from the 1st century AD decorated with reliefs of two pairs of male lovers. It was bought in 1911 by an eccentric American collector named Edward Perry Warren (who also commissioned a marble version of Rodin’s The Kiss with an added erection that scandalized the English town it was later donated to).

Warren tried to sell the cup to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which refused it. In 1953, US customs banned it from entering the country altogether. The piece bounced between private collectors for decades before the British Museum bought it in 1999 for £1.8 million. It’s now displayed without fuss, which perhaps should’ve been the point all along. Entry is free.

5. Ara Pacis Museum, Rome

The Ara Pacis Museum is the only major Roman museum built around a single artifact, and that artifact has been through more than most. The Ara Pacis Augustae (the Altar of Augustan Peace) was commissioned by the Roman Senate in 13 BC and dedicated four years later to celebrate the peace Augustus had brought to the empire after his campaigns in Spain and Gaul.

Fragments had been surfacing in Roman digs since the 16th century, scattered between the Uffizi, the Louvre, and the Vatican, until Mussolini got involved. As part of his program to refashion himself as a 20th-century Augustus, Il Duce had them tracked down and reassembled for the 2000th anniversary of Augustus’s birth in 1937–38. A Fascist-era pavilion went up beside the Tiber to house the altar, conveniently next to the Mausoleum of Augustus that Mussolini had also restored. The propaganda was many things, but subtle was not one of them.

By the 1990s, the pavilion had become a leaky disaster, so the city commissioned American architect Richard Meier to design a replacement. Romans absolutely hated it, and critics called the new glass-and-travertine building a gas station, a McDonald’s, a coffin, and even a bunker. The mayor’s challenger ran on a promise to demolish it. He did not demolish it. The altar inside is still magnificent as ever.

6. Lugdunum Museum and Roman Theaters, Lyon, France

Lyon was founded in 43 BC as Lugdunum and served as the capital of Roman Gaul for three centuries. The Gallo-Roman Museum sits on the hillside of Fourvière alongside the ancient Roman theater and odeon (both still in use for summer concerts). Designed by Bernard Zehrfuss in 1975, the building is mostly buried in the hillside, and you spiral down through it on a long concrete ramp that mimics archaeological stratigraphy (the layers of soil and debris that build up over a site like tree rings).

The piece that makes a visit worthwhile is the Claudian Tables: bronze plaques inscribed with the verbatim speech Emperor Claudius gave to the Roman Senate in AD 48, arguing that Gauls should be admitted as senators. The historian Tacitus also recorded this speech, but he cleaned it up considerably for his Annals. The bronze version is the real, rambling argument Claudius actually gave, full of historical asides and defensive tangents. It is the closest thing we have to a recording of a Roman emperor in mid-speech.