There are a lot of various museum and galleries in Britain. Which museums and art galleries would you to visit? What Russian museums do you find interesting? Which of them would you like to visit or you have already visited?

There are a lot of various museum and galleries in Britain. Which museums and art galleries would you to visit? What Russian museums do you find interesting? Which of them would you like to visit or you have already visited?

Millions people all over the world spend their holidays visiting museums and art galleries. They visit them to see new things, to know more about other countries, their traditions, about history and even future of the mankind. There are many different types of museums, each having its own specific orientation.

London is very rich in museums and art galleries. The Tower of London is a historical museum. It is the oldest palace, fortress and prison in Europe. It’s also one of the most popular museums nowadays. The British Museum is the largest and richest of museum in the world. It comprises the national museum of archaeology and ethnography and the national library. Madam Tussaud's is the most popular and talked about wax museum in the world. There are wax models of the famous and infamous, both living and dead, from every walk of life.

Cultural life of London would be impossible without the Royal Albert hall, the Royal Festival hall, the National theatre and a great number of museums: the Victoria and Albert museum, the Geological Museum, the Museum of Mankind, Natural History Museum and others. We can see masterpieces of old and modern art there. I want to visit the Victoria and Albert museum. The Victoria and Albert museum is the largest museum of art and design in the world. Some halls of this museum belong to history of fashion, where you can see even find legendary shoes of British designer of fashion Vivienne Westwood, in which Naomi Campbell fell on the podium during fashion show.

If you are fond of painting you'll go to the Tate Gallery. A rich sugar manufacturer Henry Tate founded it in 1897. There are about 300 oils and 19000 watercolours and drawings. There are many works by the English painter William Turner there. Most of his paintings are connected with the sea theme. There are a lot of paintings by the 16-th century English artists and paintings by foreign artists of the 19-20-th centuries. There are some paintings by impressionists there. You can see works by modern painters: Pablo Picasso among them. There are many interesting sculptures there. Henry Moor's can be seen there. He was a famous British sculptor.

The National Gallery houses one of the richest and most extensive collections of painting in the world. It stands to the north of Trafalgar Square. The gallery was designed by William Wilkins. The National Gallery was founded in 1824 when the government bought the collection of John Angerstein which included 38 paintings. The collection covers all schools and periods of painting, but is especially famous for its examples of Rembrant and Rubens.

There are nearly a thousand museums and galleries in Russia many of them being world famous.

The largest collection of Russian art is the Tretiakov Art Gallery in Moscow. Sorry to say I haven’t been to Tretiakov Gallery. But I know that the State Tretiakov Gallery is named after its founder Pavel Tretiakov. He began to collect Russian paintings in 1856. He was a famous patron of arts. Pavel Tretiakov donated his collection to Moscow. The Tretiakov Art Gallery is a real treasury of canvases by prominent Russian painters. It contains price-less collections of icons, 17—20th centuries paintings and sculptures and contemporary Russian painting and sculpture.

One of the largest and most remarkable museums of the world is the Hermitage, more than three hundred halls housing its exhibitions of articles of the greatest artistic value. The museum's collections now comprise work of various periods in the development of art, from ancient I times up to the present day. Famous painters from different countries are represented there.

The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg is another picture gallery which contains the richest collection of Russian paintings of 18-19th centuries and the best collection of Russian sculpture.

In the Pushkin Museum of the Fine Arts in Moscow the art of the Ancient East and Western Europe is represented. This museum possesses a unique collection of copies of the finest sculptures of the old time. It is in this museum that many famous foreign expositions of the Fine Arts are displayed almost every year.

Some words about Rostov museums.

The Museum of Don Cossacks History is one of the oldest museums in the South of Russia. It is a well-established museum complex. Thousands of relics from the Don Cossacks -- connected to the best in Cossack traditions – are stored in the museum’s depositories. Its collection, the richest and unrivalled of its kind in the world, includes 115 thousand artifacts. More than 150 people visit the museum and more than 2 thousand tours are organized every year.