Great Museums Quiz
In December 2002, this Amsterdam museum had two valuable paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, stolen.
- View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen are both paintings by Vincent Van Gogh that were stolen from the Van Gogh museum. In 2003, two men were arrested for the theft, but the paintings were not recovered.
This museum, opened in Spain's Basque Country in 1997, was designed by architect Frank Gehry and features mostly avant-garde art.
- Hailed by critics as one of the great buildings of recent times, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain's Basque Country was featured in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.
This museum was built in what used to be the Bankside Power Station in London:
- The Bankside Power Station in London stopped operating in 1981. After an extensive renovation it reopened in 2000 as the Tate Modern, England's national museum for modern art.
Which museum holds the Guinness World Record as having the world's largest collection of paintings?
- Russia's State Hermitage Museum, located in St. Petersburg in what used to be the Tsar's Winter Palace, boasts the world's largest collection of paintings.
This museum features a 94-foot-long model of a blue whale and the Hayden Planetarium:
- The Museum of Science in Boston also has a planetarium named after Charles Hayden, but the American Museum of Natural History on New York City's upper west side has both a larger planetarium and a life-sized blue whale.
In this museum, you can see the Rosetta Stone and ruins from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos—both included among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World:
- In the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, the nation's power and reach allowed it to collect innumerable artifacts from cultures around the world. The best are on display at the British Museum in London.
This museum is the home of King Tutankhamen's tomb:
- When it's not off on one of its many globe-trotting tours, King Tutankhamen's tomb is housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Egyptian government has announced plans to build a Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, near the Great Pyramids. When that museum is completed, King Tut's tomb will be moved there.
In which museum would you find the original Mona Lisa?
- Called La Gioconda in Italian and La Joconde in French, the Mona Lisa has been owned by the French government since around 1516, when King Francois I bought it for 4,000 écus.
In what Italian city can you visit the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace?
- Both the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace are located in Florence, which is considered the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance.
Which museum includes the Sistine Chapel?
- The Sistine Chapel, most famous for the Michelangelo fresco on its ceiling, is part of the Vatican Museum complex. As well as being part of the museum, the Sistine Chapel is also the site of the Papal conclave—the ceremony by which a new Pope is selected.
