Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Canada's oldest art museum began in 1860 as a gentlemen's association in a young commercial city, decades before Montreal had the wealth to fill a gallery. It grew with the fortunes around it, and today it spreads across five linked pavilions on either side of Sherbrooke Street, joined by a tunnel hung with art.

The oldest of them, the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, faces the street behind a wall of Vermont marble columns from 1912. Inside, the collection runs wide rather than deep: old masters and Rembrandt, the Impressionists, a strong showing of Canadian painting from the landscapes of the Group of Seven, and one pavilion given over entirely to decorative arts and design.

A later pavilion was built around a downtown Protestant church the museum took over. Its concert hall now sits beneath the old sanctuary's stained glass, including a rare group of windows by Tiffany of New York.