Italian Museums Among Best in the World

Florence and Rome Galleries Ranked in TripAdvisor’s Top 25

It comes as no surprise that Italian museums feature prominently on TripAdvisor’s newly released ranking of the top 25 museums in the world. The travel site’s annual Travel Choice Awards rank the top destinations, hotels, restaurants, and more, based on several factors, focusing on the quality and quantity of user reviews.

What may be surprising is that the most famous museums in Rome and Florence like the Vatican Museums or the Uffizi Gallery are not on the list. According to this ranking, Florence’s Accademia Gallery and the Borghese Gallery in Rome are the ones most definitely worthy of a visit. The Florentine Galleria comes in at number 5 on the list, and the Borghese ranks 18, while the top spot is earned by the Art Institute of Chicago. For the complete list, visit TripAdvisor.

Florence: Accademia Gallery

Florence beckons with an embrace sated in art so magnificently crafted, one is left dizzy and lightheaded, a spellbound victim of Stendhal syndrome. To walk these cobblestone-hewn streets is to walk through a landscape of masterpieces, art and architecture formed by divine skill. And Michelangelo’s David is at the center of it all. Perhaps the world’s most well known and recognized statue, this Renaissance masterpiece cut from marble is a display of artistic genius, and it finds a home in the Accademia Gallery. Over 5 meters of marble perfection stands impressively, imposingly, beneath a domed skylight in the Tribune, and attracts millions of visitors every year.

Though glorious David might be deemed the king of the house, there are many other reasons to visit the Accademia. Michelangelo’s St. Matthew and Prisoners reside here, as does the Pietà di Palestrina (authorship of which is still questionable). The walls are studded with works by some of Italy’s greatest artists, including Botticelli, Perugino, Bronzino, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, and Alessandro Allori. The Cherubini Conservatory’s Collection in the Galleria is well worth a visit and music lovers will rejoice at the rare and unique pieces by Stradivari and Bartolomeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano who created the instrument for the Medicis.

Rome: Borghese Gallery

The Borghese Gallery in Rome provides an experience that is a little more intimate than the throngs in the Accademia. Housed in a gorgeous 17th century villa at the outskirts of Rome in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana, it is a small gem of 20 rooms of antiquities, Renaissance, and baroque art. Bernini sculptures lavishly adorn rooms on the ground floor, Caravaggio paintings luxuriate on the walls; the collection is a roll call of greats- Titian, Canova, Raphael, Botticelli. With a limited number of visitors daily, and two-hourly intervals of admittance, the experience of the Borghese Gallery is an intimate and special one. And after a morning of marble masterpieces and splendidly frescoed rooms, the adjoining Villa Borghese gardens are a pleasure to spend time in.

What You Need To Know

The Accademia Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, 8:15am – 6:50pm, and closed on Mondays. Best to buy tickets in advance or book a tour, as the wait for the ticket office can often be over an hour. The Firenze Card is another option for skipping the long line.
The Borghese Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, 8:30am – 7:30pm, and closed on Mondays. It is necessary to make reservations in advance.

Aleksandra Hogendorf