Musée du Louvre, Paris

It isn’t until you’re standing in the vast courtyard of the Louvre, with sunlight shimmering through the glass pyramid and crowds milling about beneath the museum’s ornate façade, that you can truly say you’ve been to Paris. Holding tens of thousands of works of art – from Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek antiquities to masterpieces by artists such as da Vinci (including his incomparable Mona Lisa), Michelangelo and Rembrandt – it’s no surprise that this is one of the world’s most visited museums.