Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Calouste Gulbenkian was an Armenian-born oil financier who earned the nickname Mr Five Percent for the share of Iraqi oil he negotiated in the early 1900s, which made him one of the richest men alive. He collected by a single rule, only the best, and moved his treasures between Constantinople, London and Paris before settling on Lisbon, where he spent his last years.

He left the whole collection to a foundation in his name, and in 1969 a purpose-built museum opened in a garden in the middle of the city. It runs in one unbroken sweep from ancient Egypt and Islamic tiles and Persian carpets through to European painting, with a Rembrandt, a Rubens and pictures by Renoir and Monet. The end of the route belongs to his friend the jeweller René Lalique, nearly two hundred pieces of Art Nouveau glass and gold bought straight from the maker.

Everything on show was chosen by one man before his death in 1955, and the low modernist building, set among lawns and a pond, was designed around his objects rather than the other way round.