Museums come in all shapes and sizes, with vastly dissimilar collections.

These very special buildings are abode to the almost precious artworks humans have ever created and are an infinite source of inspiration for those who visit and enjoy them.

Nosotros have rounded up the 20 largest museums, past area covered, in the world.

1. Louvre Museum

The Musée du Louvre
Full general view of the Louvre pyramid, July 03, 2021 in Paris, France. The Muséeast du Louvre is the national museum and fine art gallery of France and the largest every bit well as one of the most visited museums in the world. Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images/Getty Images

The largest art museum in the globe and one of Paris' most famous tourist attractions, the Louvre covers an area of 782,910 square feet (72,735 square meters) and is home to around 38,000 art pieces dating from prehistory to the 21st century.

It is well known for being the home of Leonardo Da Vinci'south Mona Lisa, one of the most valuable paintings in museums today.

ii. State Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage Museum
The Winter Palace in Palace Square The Winter Palace houses the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg well-nigh visited attraction and the 2nd largest museum of the world. Photograph past Dean Conger/Corbis via Getty Images/Getty images

The State Hermitage Museum is St Petersburg most pop visitor allure and the second largest art museum in the world. Housed within v interconnected buildings covering an area of 719,480 square anxiety, the museum has over 3 one thousand thousand items in its collection dating from the Stone Age to the present.

The Winter Palace (1754–62) houses the heart of the Hermitage drove including the Hermitage's masterpieces of western European Art since the Eye Ages. The Hermitage also has large holdings of Asian art that includes its noteworthy drove of the fine art of Central Asia.

3. National Museum of Red china

 National Museum of China
A full general view of the National Museum of China on famous Tiananmen Square on April 12, 2015 in Beijing, China. The museum'due south aim is to brainwash about the arts and history of Communist china. Photograph by Xiao Lu Chu/Getty Images/Getty images

The third largest museum in the world and the supreme palace of history and art in China, the National Museum of China (NMC) is located forth the famous Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The site covers an expanse of 700,000 square anxiety that houses more than ane.iv meg items of collection roofing ancient and modernistic artefacts, rare and antique books, and works of art.

iv. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is i of the world's largest art museums. Its collection includes more than than ii 1000000 artworks. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images/Getty Images

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City's Fifth Avenue is the largest art museum in the U.S and the fourth largest museum in the globe, occupying an surface area of 633,100 square feet.

The Met'south art collection includes more than than 2 meg pieces spanning v,000 years of fine art from around the world. The chief pieces preserved in this museum are those of classical artifact together with artworks from ancient Egypt.

The museum came into existence in 1870 with the intention of promoting art every bit part of the school curriculum. Co-ordinate to the Trustees, "The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to inventiveness, knowledge, and ideas."

5. Vatican Museums

Vatican Museums
The sculptures of the Braccio Nuovo of the Chiaramonte Gallery are seen in the Vatican Museums on June eight, 2020. The Vatican Museums are the public museums of the Vatican city. Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images/Getty Images

The Vatican Museum, which calls itself "the museum of museums," is the 5th largest museum in the world with 460,000 square anxiety of gallery space (43,000m2). Established in 1506, information technology is the well-nigh famous museum in Italian republic.

The museum says information technology "houses an extensive collection of art, archaeology and ethno-anthropology gathered by the popes over the centuries and also some of the Apostolic Palace'due south most significant rooms."

Information technology has a total of 54 galleries, including the famous Sistine Chapel built in the 15th century and the place where Cardinals elect a new pope. The ceiling that show scenes from the Bible is the virtually spectacular part of the room and it was created by Michelangelo in 1508.

6. Tokyo National Museum

Tokyo National Museum
The outside view of Tokyo National Museum is seen on June one, 2020 in Tokyo, Nippon. The museum is the largest fine art museum in Nippon, and one of the largest fine art museums in the world. Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Epitome/Getty Images

The Tokyo National Museum has a gallery space of 410,000 square feet (38,000m2) and about 120,000 objects in its drove.

It houses the largest drove of Japanese art in the earth and it too collects and displays an important collection of artworks from other Asian countries.

Co-ordinate to the museum "there are 89 national treasures and 648 important cultural properties (every bit of March, 2021) amongst them." Located in the Ueno Park, to explore the Tokyo National Museum is to observe Japan.

vii. Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museo Nacional de Antropología
The courtyard at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City, United mexican states, September xx, 2015. The museum is the largest and virtually visited museum in Mexico. Photo by John Gress/Corbis via Getty Images/Getty Images

National Museum of Anthropology is the largest museum in United mexican states with a gallery infinite of 360,000 square feet (33,000m2).

The museum was built every bit a tribute to the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and it houses over 600,000 drove pieces that include the earth's largest collection of ancient Mexican art and also has ethnographic exhibits about United mexican states's present-twenty-four hours indigenous groups. Noteworthy are the Aztec Calendar, the recreation of Pakal'south tomb, or Jade mask of the Zapotec Bat God.

8. Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum
Architectural exterior of the Five&A museum of fine art and blueprint on April 24, 2020 in London, England. Photo by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images/Getty Images

The "5&A'south buildings occupy 12 acres of state in Due south Kensington and are over a third of a mile in circumference," according to the museum's website.

It has a gallery surface area of 330,000 square feet (thirty,658m2) with a permanent drove of over two.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human being creativity. The about popular collections include Asian and Islamic art.

9. National Museum of Korea

 National Museum of Korea
The National Museum of Korea in Seoul on May six, 2020. This is the flagship museum of Korean history and art in Southward Korea. Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images

Located in Yongsan, in the centre of Seoul, the half dozen-story building of the National Museum of Korea is ranked as one of the summit largest museums in the world.

It has a gallery area of 291,600 square feet (27,090 m2) which houses over 200,000 collections displaying the best drove of history and culture of Korea from medieval times to the nowadays mean solar day.

10. Art Found of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United states. Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images/Getty Images

Founded in 1879, information technology is one of the oldest museums in the U.S.

It measures 280,000 square anxiety in area and information technology houses a permanent collection of almost 300,000 works of art that span centuries and the whole earth, ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary blueprint and from textiles to installation art.

11. Nanjing Museum

The Nanjing Museum
This picture taken on September 4, 2019 shows a visitor taking a picture at the entrance of the Nanjing museum, in Nanjing, China's Jiangsu province. The museum is one of the largest in China Getty Images/Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

Located in the capital of Jiangsu Province at the southern foot of Regal Mountain, Nanjing museum is the second largest museum in China.

It has over 400,000 items in its permanent collection displayed over more than 753,473 square feet( 70,000 square metres).

The artwork on display includes statuary, ceramics, lacquer wares, silk & embroidery, paintings & calligraphies. It is quite well-known for its large collections of Ming and Qing majestic porcelain.

12. British Museum

 British Museum
Visitors are seen in the Swell Court of the British Museum in London on December 3, 2020. The permanent collection of the British Museum has nigh eight 1000000 artworks and was widely nerveless during the era of the British Empire. Photograph past JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images

Established in 1753, the British Museum is the largest in the U.Yard. with a gallery area of 277,000 square feet (25,700m2) and 8 million objects that show the diverseness of human being cultures.

The most popular attraction is the Egyptian gallery, the second finest collection of Egyptian relics in the world exterior Egypt, especially the Rosetta Stone, believed to have been engraved in Arab republic of egypt 196 B.C.

13. National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art
Workers clear the steps at the National Gallery of Art 26 January, 2004 in Washington Photo by TIM SLOAN/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images

Established in 1937, the National Gallery of Art is a major landmark of Washington, D.C. The museum is home to more than 150,000 sculptures, decorative arts, prints, drawings, photographs, and paintings in the gallery's permanent collection.

14. Cinquantenaire Museum

Art and History Museum
A picture taken on April 23, 2021, at the Fine art & History Museum in Brussels shows the restored original altarpiece of Saint-George (1493) by Flemish Northern renaissance sculptor January Borman. Located in the Cinquantenaire park, the Art & History Museum is ane of the largest museums in Europe. Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images

I of the largest museums in Europe, this public museum is part of the Regal Museums of Art and History located in the Cinquantenaire Park in Brussels, Belgium.

With a total of 350.000 works of art from various continents dating from the 10th century to the present day, the museum is defended to the history of human evolution and the largest civilizations.

15. Three Gorges Museum

Three Gorges Museum
A sculpture featuring Soviet writer Maxim Gorky is displayed at an exhibition on Soviet painting titled "The City of the Sun - Triumph of the Socialist Realism," at the 3 Gorges Museum October 22, 2006 in Chongqing Municipality, China. The museum opened in 2005, replacing the former Chongqing Museum. Photo past China Photos/Getty Images/Getty Images

The huge dome-shaped Three Gorges Museum opened in 2005 and it covers an area of most 430,000 square anxiety.

The focus of the museum is on the culture and geography of the Three Gorges region and construction of the dam, but displays also include a wide range of artefacts such as cultural remnants from the Han Dynasty, statuary wares of Shu and Ba States, relics of southwestern people, and calligraphies, paintings and more.

16. MASS MoCA

Mass MoCA
Aerial Drone images of Mass MoCA on September 15, 2018 in North Adams, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Museum of Gimmicky Fine art is a museum in a converted Arnold Impress Works factory building circuitous. Photograph by Douglas Mason/Getty Images/Getty Images

I of the largest centres for contemporary visual fine art and performing arts in the United states of america with 250,000 square feet of open infinite, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building circuitous.

MASS MoCA exhibits art by both well-known and emerging artists focusing on large-scale, immersive installations that would be impossible to realize in conventional museums.

17. The Israel Museum

Established in 1965,this is the largest museum in the Middle E with nearly 500,000 collections of arts and a gallery area of 199,000 square feet(18,500 m2).

Equally claimed past the museum, "It houses works dating from prehistory to the nowadays day, in its Archeology, Fine Arts, and Jewish Fine art and Life Wings, and features the nearly all-encompassing holdings of biblical and Holy State archæology in the earth."

18. Minneapolis Establish of Art

 The Minneapolis Institute Of Arts
The Minneapolis Constitute Of Arts on May 23, 2015 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo Past Raymond Boyd/Getty Images/Getty Images

Established in 1883, this is one of the largest art museums in the U.s. with a gallery area of 188,000 square feet (17,500m2), information technology houses more than 90,000 artworks representing v,000 years of world history.

19. Musée National d'Art Moderne

 Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Georges Pompidou Centre on December 30, 2019 in Paris, France. The Pompidou Eye was designed in the style of loftier-tech architecture by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. It houses the Public Data Library, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for mod art in Europe. Photo by Athanasios Gioumpasis/Getty Images/Getty Images

The national museum for modern art of France is located in the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It is one of the biggest museums of modernistic and contemporary art in France with a collection that includes well-nigh 15,000 works representing the wealth of the artistic creation in 20th and 19th centuries

The permanent collections include major artists from those periods, such as Picasso, Dufy, Modigliani, Derain, Picabia, or Chagall among others.

twenty. Shandong Museum

The Shandong Museum in the City of Jinan, Shandong is 'the first large-scale, provincial, integrated topographic museum after the founding of the People's Republic of Prc'. It homes a collection of more than 210,000 historical relics.