London National Gallery

The National Gallery was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1824, with 38 pictures displayed in a townhouse. Over the years it has become one of the world’s grandest museums. The Gallery has made numerous additions, the most recent and controversial being the massive, modern Sainsbury Wing (Prince Charles described an early version of the design as “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”). The Sainsbury Wing holds almost all of the museum’s large exhibitions as well as its restaurants and lecture halls. If you’re pressed for time, head to Art Start in the Sainsbury Wing, where you can design and print out a personalized tour of the paintings you want to see.

WEST WING: 16TH CENTURY. Dominated by works from the Italian High Renaissance, both Roman and Venetian, as well as from the first flowering of German and Flemish art. Religious motifs give way to domestic and rural themes. Room 2 features one of the museum’s most interesting works: the Leonardo Cartoon (Virgin and Child with St. Anne), a detailed preparatory drawing by Leonardo da Vinci for a never-executed painting. Other highlights include Leonardo’s second Virgin on the Rocks and Parmigianino’s nudes. Room 8 includes works by Michelangelo and Raphael. Rooms 9 and 10 focus on northern Italy, with works by Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, and Piombo.

EAST WING: 18TH TO EARLY 20TH CENTURIES. The National Gallery’s most crowded wing houses the Impressionists. Stealing the show in Room 45 is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a painting which he originally hung in the guest room for his good friend Paul Gauguin, whose paintings are displayed nearby. Pissarro’s landscapes and Cézanne’s Bathers also are on display. Room 44 contains Seurat’s controversial Bathers at Asnières in addition to works by Manet, Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. As a reminder that there was art on the English side of the Channel, Rooms 34 and 35 feature portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough as well as six luminescent Turners, including the stunning The Fighting Temeraire. Room 41 will satisfy the classically-inclined, with works by Ingres and Delacroix.