Museums
As I’ve been to London, I’d like to tell about the most interesting museums and galleries I’ve visited there. The British Museum is one of the world’s greatest treasure-stores. The museum has two departments: The Museum of Mankind and The National History Museum. The Museum of Mankind includes the vast collection of antiquities, ancient works of art in stone, bronze and gold, and collections, illustrating Western Asiatic Civilizations. The NHM contains 5 principal collections on the history of plants, minerals and the animal kingdom. A series of new permanent exhibitions have been opened in the museum, among them «Dinosaurs and their living relatives». The National Gallery is one of the greatest museums of art in the world. It is noted for the balance of its collections in all the important art schools and almost all old masters are represented there. It houses one of the most important Italian collections outside Italy. It is also famous for its Dutch collection, particularly for paintings of Rembrandt. The next door is the National Portrait Gallery. It’s the Britain’s leading art gallery of portraits of famous people of British history. It is noted for representing various kinds of portraits — from traditional old paintings to photographs. The famous Tate Gallery contains the unique collection of British paintings from the 16th century till the present day. Turner and Blake are particularly well represented in the collection. There is a number of museums in London which are neither art museums or galleries. Nevertheless they attract tourists from different parts of Britain and from all over the world. You are sure to know about the Madam Tusseau’s museum that contains hundreds of wax figures. As for our town, it is a must for every tourist to visit Arkhangelsk Museum of Fine Arts. There you can see collections of drawings and paintings of different artists, collection of unique icons painted by Russian masters. Other places to visit are our outdoors museums, they are: Chumbarovo-Luchinsky street and architecture museum in Malye Karely. The latter is well known throughout the world. I have visited many museums and galleries in my life. I was in all our town museums, museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But one I remember most — is the Madam Tusseau’s museum of London.