The world’s oldest museums

The Royal Armouries in the Tower of London is the oldest museum in Britain. It opened to the public in 1660.

Royal Armouries is located at three sites across England:

• In a purpose-built museum in Leeds, West Yorkshire
• A Victorian fort at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth, Hampshire
• Its historic home at the Tower of London in the White Tower

The Ashmolean Museum in Britain is the oldest university museum in the world.

In 1677, it received the cabinet of curiosities from Elias Ashmole. The museum houses an extensive collection of items with artistic and archaeological significance. Notable exhibitions include biblical manuscripts, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, watercolours by Turner, a ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia, and more.

The private collection was bought by the university and city of Basel in 1661 and opened to the public in 1671.

The collection is now part of a rich historical and cultural heritage in the city of Basel. The main focus is on paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600 and in the 19th and 21st centuries.

 The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie in Besançon was established in 1694 when an abbot, Jean-Baptiste Boisot, gave his personal collection to the Benedictines of the city to create a museum open to the public.

The museum is famous for its extensive collections of archaeology, paintings, and drawing cabinet and includes Egyptian mummies and works of art from famous Italian, French, and Spanish painters.

Founded in 1717, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) in St. Petersburg is one of the richest ethnographical museums in the world.

The British Museum in London was founded in 1753. Sir Hans Sloane's personal collection of curios provided the initial collection.

Today its collections number more than seven million objects from around the world and illustrate and documented the story of human culture.

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence started in the 15th century by Cosimo de’ Medici.

It is one of the most famous museums of paintings and sculpture globally, containing universally acclaimed Primitive and Renaissance paintings. It includes works by Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio.

The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, contains over three million works of art and artefacts of the world culture.

It includes paintings, graphic works, sculptures and works of applied art, archaeological finds and numismatic material.

The Museo del Prado in Madrid. Founded in 1785 by Charles III of Spain, the significant royal collection represents the foundation of the Museum's collection as we know it today.

Today, we can see great masterpieces such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosh, The Nobleman with his hand on his Chest by El Greco, Death of the Virgin by Mantegna, The Holy Family known as The Pearl by Raphael, Emperor Carlos V on Horseback by Titian, The Foot Washing by Tintoretto, Self-portrait by Durër, Las Meninas by Velázquez, The Three Graces by Rubens, and The Family of Carlos IV by Goya.

The Belvedere Palace of the Habsburg monarchs in Vienna opened in 1781 with a collection of art.

It holds the greatest collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to today.

The Louvre Museum opened to the public in 1793.

It contains nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 19th century.

The first collection was established around 1790. The collections were officially opened to the public in 1817, making it the oldest institution of its kind in Romania.

The museum comprises:

• European Art, Romanian Art and the Library (in the Brukenthal Palace),
• Contemporary Art and the Museum of History (in the Altemberger House),
• the Museum of Natural History, Museum of Pharmacy and Museum of Hunting.

The Museum was founded in 1773. It is the oldest in Latvia and the whole of the Baltics. The Museum is situated in Old Riga, in a remarkable architectural monument of the 13th–20th centuries - the ensemble of the Riga Dom.

The rich and diverse collections of the Museum came from an art and natural sciences collection of a Riga doctor, Nikolaus von Himsel (1729–1764). It houses over 5000 000 items, grouped in about 80 collections.