Dulwich Picture Gallery

Dulwich, in south London, was the first purpose-built public art gallery in England, opened in 1817. Its collection began as a royal commission that collapsed: two London dealers, Noël Desenfans and Francis Bourgeois, were assembling a national gallery for the King of Poland when Poland was partitioned out of existence in the 1790s and the king lost his throne, leaving them holding the pictures.

They left the collection to Dulwich College and hired Sir John Soane, the architect of the Bank of England, to build a home for it. Soane invented something here, top-lit galleries where daylight falls from above onto the paintings, a design copied by museums ever since. At its centre he set a small mausoleum holding the founders' coffins, lit through amber glass.

One resident is famous for going missing. Rembrandt's small portrait of Jacob de Gheyn has been stolen four times and recovered every time, earning it the nickname the takeaway Rembrandt.