ART GALLERIES · AROUND THE WORLD
The world’s great art, and how to stand in front of it.
The Uffizi and the David in Florence, the Borghese in Rome, the Louvre in Paris, teamLab in Tokyo, murals on the walls of Berlin. Reviews of the gallery tours and skip-the-line tickets worth booking, in the cities worth crossing a continent to see.
Worth the journey on their own
Three cities the art alone is worth the trip for.
Plenty of cities have a good gallery. These three are reasons to book the flight: Florence for the Renaissance, Rome for Bernini and Caravaggio, Tokyo for the rooms you walk inside. Here is what to see first in each.
Florence, Italy
The city the Renaissance was born in
Nowhere packs more of it into a short walk. Botticelli’s Venus and Spring at the Uffizi, Michelangelo’s David standing in his own hall at the Accademia, the Bargello’s sculpture, Brunelleschi’s dome over the lot. The galleries sell out days ahead, so the right ticket and a guide who knows the rooms are the difference between seeing it and surviving the queue.
- 1 Florence: Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
- 2 Florence Accademia Gallery Tour with Entrance Ticket Included
- 3 Uffizi Gallery: Renaissance Masterpieces Guided Tour
Rome, Italy
Bernini, Caravaggio and the Sistine ceiling
Rome wears its art in galleries and chapels alike. Bernini’s marble that looks like it is breathing and Caravaggio’s darkness at the Borghese, the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s ceiling at the Vatican, a Caravaggio glowing in a side chapel you walk into for nothing. The big collections cap their numbers by the half-hour, so the timed ticket is the whole game.
- 1 Rome: Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Ticket & Audioguide
- 2 Rome: Borghese Gallery Guided Tour with Skip-the-Line Entry
- 3 Rome: Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Tickets with Audioguide
Tokyo, Japan
Where art became a room you walk through
Tokyo took the gallery and turned it inside out. At teamLab the work responds to you, light pours across the floor and the walls dissolve into colour. Pair it with the city’s contemporary museums and you get the other half of the story: not the old masters, but where the medium is heading next.
- 1 Tokyo: teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry Ticket
- 2 Shibuya Crossing x Tokyo Tower and more! Go-Kart Tour
- 3 Shibuya/Tokyo Tower & Shinjuku/Shibuya Go Karting Tours
If you only book one
The art tour more visitors rave about than any other.
Out of every gallery tour and ticket on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to book it before they go.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Art Tours Right Now
The Uffizi in Florence, the Borghese in Rome, the David at the Accademia, immersive rooms in Tokyo. The bookings visitors are happiest they made.
Start with a city
Browse galleries & art tours by city.
The art capitals worth crossing a continent for, each with its own collections, its own queues to skip and its own walls to read. Pick a city and see the gallery tours, museum tickets and walks worth booking there.
Where the art is
Three art capitals worth the journey.
Start with the city that pulls you. Each one the site covers deeply, and each a completely different day with the masterpieces waiting at the end of it.
Florence
A whole Renaissance in one morning.
Florence keeps its greatest hits within a short walk: Botticelli’s Venus and Spring at the Uffizi, Michelangelo’s David standing in his own hall at the Accademia, Brunelleschi’s dome over all of it. The galleries sell out days ahead and the queues swallow an afternoon, so the right ticket and a guide who knows the rooms are the difference between seeing it and surviving it.
See the best Florence art tours →Rome
Bernini, Caravaggio and the Sistine ceiling.
Rome wears its art in galleries and chapels alike: Bernini’s marble that looks like it is breathing and Caravaggio’s darkness at the Borghese, the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s ceiling at the Vatican, and a Caravaggio glowing in a side chapel you can walk into for nothing. The famous collections cap their visitor numbers by the half-hour, so a timed ticket is not a luxury here, it is the only way in.
See the best Rome art tours →London, England
Eight centuries of art, most of it free.
No other city gives you this much for nothing: the National Gallery’s Van Eycks and Turners, the Tate’s Rothkos and Hockneys, the British Museum’s marbles, the Courtauld’s Impressionists, and the living murals of Shoreditch a short ride east. The collections are vast and the entry is open, so what you really book here is a guide who knows where to start.
See the best London art tours →Tokyo, contemporary
Where art became a room you walk through.
Tokyo took the gallery and turned it inside out. At teamLab the work responds to you, light pours across the floor and the walls dissolve into colour. Pair it with the city’s contemporary museums and you get the other half of the art story: not the old masters, but where the medium is heading next.
- 1 Tokyo: teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry Ticket
- 2 Shibuya Crossing x Tokyo Tower and more! Go-Kart Tour
- 3 Shibuya/Tokyo Tower & Shinjuku/Shibuya Go Karting Tours
Beyond the headline names
Three more cities for the art alone.
Past Florence and Rome, Europe is full of capitals that reward an art trip. Venice for the colour the masters invented, Prague for Mucha and the avant-garde, Budapest for old masters above the Danube. Pick the one that sounds like your kind of city.
Venice
Painting where the light came from.The Accademia’s Bellinis and Titians, the Guggenheim on the Grand Canal, Tintoretto’s ceilings in the scuole. The city that taught European painting how to use colour, a short walk from any vaporetto stop.
Prague
Mucha, the avant-garde and the castle.Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic, the National Gallery’s Czech modernism, the medieval panels up at the castle. A compact art city where the Gothic, the Art Nouveau and the avant-garde sit within a tram ride of each other.
Budapest
Old masters above the Danube.The Museum of Fine Arts and its Raphael and El Greco, the Hungarian National Gallery in the royal palace on Castle Hill, the Secessionist facades down in the city. A grand collection with the river running through the middle of it.
Berlin, Germany
Five great museums on a single island.
Berlin put five world collections on one island in the Spree: the Pergamon’s ancient gates, the Neues Museum’s Nefertiti, the Alte Nationalgalerie’s Romantics. A short walk away the East Side Gallery turns the longest stretch of the Wall into an open-air painting. A day pass and a guide are how you cross five centuries without losing the morning to ticket lines.
See all 18 Berlin art tours →By art city
Pick a city to see the art in.
Florence for the Renaissance. Rome for Bernini and Caravaggio. London for the National Gallery and the murals. Tokyo for the immersive rooms. Berlin for Museum Island and the East Side wall. Lisbon for the tiles and the Gulbenkian.
More art cities
More cities worth a gallery day.
Prague, Budapest, Venice, Naples, New York, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid. Smaller catalogues than the headline names, but every one of them a city where the art is reason enough to go.
Make a day of it
One perfect day with the art.
New to an art city and only have a day? Here is how to spend it, from the quiet galleries at opening to the lights after dark.
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