Great Smaller Museums of Europe

the long version

This personal tour takes the reader on an exploration of thirty-five of Europe's greatest small museums. None are national collections, but all, in their various ways, are glorious, and house some of the world's greatest art treasures. Most art lovers will be familiar with some of the collections; very few will know them all." "From the Musee Marmottan in Paris to the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, and the Louisiana Humlebaek in Copenhagen to London's Dulwich Picture Gallery, little known treasure houses are uncovered alongside fresh evaluations of those that are better known. Over 350 colour plates reflect the extraordinary collections explored here, collections of fine and decorative arts that are either royal or aristocratic, patrician or bourgeois, part of academic institutions or based in artists' houses, long-established in museums or set up as twentieth-century foundations.