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

These very special buildings are home to the well-nigh precious artworks humans have ever created and are an space source of inspiration for those who visit and enjoy them.

We have rounded upward the 20 largest museums, by expanse covered, in the world.

ane. Louvre Museum

The Musée du Louvre
Full general view of the Louvre pyramid, July 03, 2021 in Paris, France. The Musée du Louvre is the national museum and art gallery of French republic and the largest too every bit ane of the almost visited museums in the earth. Photo past Edward Berthelot/Getty Images/Getty Images

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

It is well known for being the domicile of Leonardo Da Vinci'due south Mona Lisa, 1 of the most valuable paintings in museums today.

2. State Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage Museum
The Winter Palace in Palace Square The Winter Palace houses the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg almost visited attraction and the second largest museum of the world. Photo by Dean Conger/Corbis via Getty Images/Getty images

The State Hermitage Museum is St Petersburg near pop visitor attraction and the second largest fine art museum in the world. Housed within 5 interconnected buildings covering an area of 719,480 square feet, the museum has over 3 meg items in its collection dating from the Stone Historic period 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 besides has big holdings of Asian art that includes its noteworthy collection of the art of Central Asia.

three. National Museum of China

 National Museum of China
A 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 educate nearly the arts and history of People's republic of china. Photo past Xiao Lu Chu/Getty Images/Getty images

The 3rd largest museum in the world and the supreme palace of history and art in China, the National Museum of Mainland china (NMC) is located along the famous Tiananmen Foursquare in Beijing.

The site covers an expanse of 700,000 foursquare feet that houses more i.4 meg items of collection covering ancient and modern artefacts, rare and antiquarian books, and works of art.

4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is one of the world's largest fine art museums. Its collection includes more than than two meg artworks. Photograph by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images/Getty Images

The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art in New York City's 5th Avenue is the largest fine art museum in the U.S and the fourth largest museum in the earth, occupying an area of 633,100 square feet.

The Met'south art collection includes more than than two million pieces spanning five,000 years of art from around the earth. The main 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 equally part of the schoolhouse curriculum. According to the Trustees, "The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art collects, studies, conserves, and presents pregnant works of art across all times and cultures in social club to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas."

v. Vatican Museums

Vatican Museums
The sculptures of the Braccio Nuovo of the Chiaramonte Gallery are seen in the Vatican Museums on June 8, 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, it is the about famous museum in Italy.

The museum says it "houses an extensive collection of fine art, archæology and ethno-anthropology gathered past the popes over the centuries and also some of the Apostolic Palace's near meaning rooms."

It has a total of 54 galleries, including the famous Sistine Chapel congenital in the 15th century and the place where Cardinals elect a new pope. The ceiling that prove scenes from the Bible is the most spectacular part of the room and it was created past Michelangelo in 1508.

6. Tokyo National Museum

Tokyo National Museum
The exterior view of Tokyo National Museum is seen on June 1, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. The museum is the largest art museum in Japan, and 1 of the largest art museums in the world. Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Paradigm/Getty Images

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

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

According to the museum "there are 89 national treasures and 648 important cultural properties (as of March, 2021) amongst them." Located in the Ueno Park, to explore the Tokyo National Museum is to discover Japan.

seven. Museo Nacional de Antropología

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

National Museum of Anthropology is the largest museum in Mexico with a gallery infinite of 360,000 square anxiety (33,000m2).

The museum was congenital as a tribute to the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and it houses over 600,000 collection pieces that include the earth'southward largest drove of ancient Mexican art and also has ethnographic exhibits near Mexico'southward present-day indigenous groups. Noteworthy are the Aztec Calendar, the recreation of Pakal's 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 art and pattern on April 24, 2020 in London, England. Photograph by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images/Getty Images

The "V&A'due south buildings occupy 12 acres of land in Southward Kensington and are over a tertiary of a mile in circumference," according to the museum's website.

It has a gallery surface area of 330,000 square anxiety (30,658m2) with a permanent collection of over 2.three million objects that span over v,000 years of homo creativity. The most pop collections include Asian and Islamic art.

ix. National Museum of Korea

 National Museum of Korea
The National Museum of Korea in Seoul on May 6, 2020. This is the flagship museum of Korean history and fine art in Due south Korea. Photo past Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images

Located in Yongsan, in the heart of Seoul, the six-story edifice of the National Museum of Korea is ranked every bit one of the height 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 collection of history and culture of Korea from medieval times to the nowadays day.

x. Art Establish of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago
The Fine art Constitute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest fine art museums in the U.s.a.. Photograph 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 foursquare anxiety in area and it houses a permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art that bridge centuries and the whole earth, ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art.

11. Nanjing Museum

The Nanjing Museum
This film taken on September iv, 2019 shows a company taking a picture at the entrance of the Nanjing museum, in Nanjing, China's Jiangsu province. The museum is ane of the largest in People's republic of china Getty Images/Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

Located in the capital of Jiangsu Province at the southern foot of Majestic Mountain, Nanjing museum is the 2d largest museum in China.

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

The artwork on display includes bronze, ceramics, lacquer wares, silk & embroidery, paintings & calligraphies. It is quite well-known for its big collections of Ming and Qing imperial 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 drove of the British Museum has well-nigh eight million artworks and was widely nerveless during the era of the British Empire. Photo by 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 anxiety (25,700m2) and 8 1000000 objects that prove the diversity of human cultures.

The nearly pop attraction is the Egyptian gallery, the second finest collection of Egyptian relics in the world outside Egypt, especially the Rosetta Stone, believed to have been engraved in Egypt 196 B.C.

13. National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art
Workers articulate 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 Fine 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 drove.

14. Cinquantenaire Museum

Art and History Museum
A moving-picture show taken on Apr 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

One of the largest museums in Europe, this public museum is part of the Majestic Museums of Fine art and History located in the Cinquantenaire Park in Brussels, Belgium.

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

15. Three Gorges Museum

Three Gorges Museum
A sculpture featuring Soviet author Maxim Gorky is displayed at an exhibition on Soviet painting titled "The Metropolis of the Sun - Triumph of the Socialist Realism," at the Three Gorges Museum October 22, 2006 in Chongqing Municipality, Prc. The museum opened in 2005, replacing the former Chongqing Museum. Photograph by Red china Photos/Getty Images/Getty Images

The huge dome-shaped Iii Gorges Museum opened in 2005 and information technology covers an surface area of near 430,000 square anxiety.

The focus of the museum is on the culture and geography of the Three Gorges region and structure of the dam, but displays also include a wide range of artefacts such as cultural remnants from the Han Dynasty, bronze 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 Contemporary Art is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex. Photo past Douglas Mason/Getty Images/Getty Images

One of the largest centres for contemporary visual fine art and performing arts in the United States with 250,000 square feet of open infinite, the Massachusetts Museum of Gimmicky Fine art is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory edifice complex.

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 Eastward with nearly 500,000 collections of arts and a gallery area of 199,000 foursquare feet(18,500 m2).

As claimed by the museum, "It houses works dating from prehistory to the nowadays solar day, in its Archeology, Fine Arts, and Jewish Art and Life Wings, and features the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Country archaeology in the globe."

xviii. Minneapolis Institute of Fine 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 United States with a gallery expanse of 188,000 foursquare anxiety (17,500m2), information technology houses more than xc,000 artworks representing 5,000 years of earth history.

19. Musée National d'Art Moderne

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

The national museum for modern art of France is located in the Heart Pompidou in Paris. Information technology is 1 of the biggest museums of modern and contemporary fine art in France with a collection that includes about 15,000 works representing the wealth of the artistic cosmos in 20th and 19th centuries

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

20. Shandong Museum

The Shandong Museum in the Metropolis of Jinan, Shandong is 'the beginning large-scale, provincial, integrated topographic museum later the founding of the People's Republic of Red china'. It homes a collection of more than 210,000 historical relics.