The trusted guide to the world's museums
World Best Museums is a catalogue of 1,481 museums across 101 countries and 716 cities. It covers the institutions everyone knows — the Louvre, the Prado, the Met, the British Museum — and a long tail that guidebooks skip: a submarine hauled onto a beach in Visakhapatnam, a museum of self-playing organs in Utrecht, the world’s largest collection of carpentry tools in Kobe.
Every entry is written rather than scraped. Each one says what the museum actually holds, what is worth the detour and what is not, how long a visit takes, and whether tickets need booking ahead. Where a museum can be booked, current availability and prices are shown on the page.
Browse museums by country
Museums are filed by country and by city, so a country page gathers everything from its national collections down to single-room local museums. These are the 101 countries currently in the catalogue, largest first.
1,481 museums. 101 countries. One catalogue.
Browse the full catalogue by country, city, museum type or subject — or search for a museum by name. Every entry carries opening hours, admission, location and official links, alongside bookable tickets and guided tours.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
DenverExplore diverse exhibits and interactive experiences at Denver's premier science museum.
British Motor Museum
GaydonThe British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire, houses the world's largest collection of historic British cars.
Museum of Illusions Salt Lake City
Salt Lake CityExplore interactive optical illusions in Salt Lake City's Museum of Illusions.
Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg
HamburgExplore 3,000 years of maritime history in Hamburg's historic Kaispeicher B.
Motag Living Museum
MalayInteractive museum showcasing traditional Filipino farming and crafts in Boracay.
National Museum of Scotland
EdinburghScotland's national museum in Edinburgh.
Botero Museum
BogotáThe Botero Museum in Bogotá showcases a significant collection of artworks by Fernando Botero and other international artists.
Sigmund Freud Museum
ViennaExplore the life and work of Sigmund Freud in his former residence and practice.
Browse museums by city
The cities below hold the densest museum quarters in the catalogue. Each city page maps every museum in it and breaks the list down by type, so an afternoon can be planned around what is actually within walking distance.
What is on every museum page
A museum entry starts with what the place is and why it exists — the collection, the building, the history that produced it. Then the practical half: what a visit involves, how much time to allow, which parts are worth the queue, and the things worth knowing before arriving, from timed tickets that sell out weeks ahead to sites where most of the visit is outdoors.
Where a museum treats a contested subject, the entry says so plainly instead of smoothing it over. Where a photograph could not be sourced under a licence that permits reuse, the entry carries a designed cover rather than someone else’s picture.
Each page also maps the museum, lists the other museums nearby, and — where one exists — shows live availability for tickets and guided tours.