Yale University Art Gallery

When the painter John Trumbull handed Yale more than 100 of his own pictures in 1832, he attached an unusual condition: he and his wife should be buried within the gallery, beneath his paintings. Trumbull had fought in the American Revolution and then spent his life painting it, and his canvases of the Declaration of Independence and the surrender at Yorktown are here. That gift made this the oldest university art museum in the country.

The collection long outgrew Trumbull. It runs from ancient Mediterranean art to a famous group of American furniture and silver, and it holds Vincent van Gogh's 'The Night Cafe', its clashing reds and greens painted in Arles in 1888. There is early Italian painting, African sculpture, and modern work alongside.

The building itself is a landmark. The 1953 wing on Chapel Street was the first major commission of the architect Louis Kahn, later one of the century's most admired, and its bare concrete ceiling of tetrahedrons announced the plain, weighty style he became known for. Admission is free.