At EasyFrame we have a passion for art, and we feed it as often as we can by visiting museums and galleries. It gives us ideas for our frames, and it keeps us cheerful. Who can stay in a bad mood in front of Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night', Klimt's 'The Kiss' or Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'?
There is wonderful art everywhere in the world, from ancient cave paintings to 21st-century installations. Of all the galleries on the planet, these five must be among the finest.
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Amsterdam is famous for its canals, its cafés and its cosmopolitan feel. It is also home to the Rijksmuseum, which opened in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam eight years later.
In the 17th century, Dutch painters were at the forefront of European art. Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals were famous for an intense realism that made great use of light and shade.
The Rijksmuseum is partly a monument to them, and holds masterpieces such as Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' and Vermeer's 'The Milkmaid'. It also has collections of decorative arts and historical objects, and a small Asian collection in its own pavilion.
The Uffizi, Florence
Italy has a long association with art. It produced some of the greatest artists who ever lived, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Caravaggio among them, and it is full of museums and galleries, with frescoed churches wherever you look.
Of them all, the Uffizi in Florence may be the most spectacular. Built in the 16th century, it stands beside the River Arno, a stone's throw from the medieval Ponte Vecchio. Its collection runs from ancient sculpture to the 18th century, with the emphasis on Renaissance painting.
Highlights include Botticelli's 'The Birth of Venus', Titian's 'Venus of Urbino' and Caravaggio's 'Medusa'. Keep an eye out for the Leonardos too.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
New York has many excellent galleries, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known simply as 'the Met', is hard to beat. On Fifth Avenue, at the edge of Central Park, this sprawling building holds a permanent collection of over two million works.
Its departments span the globe and many centuries. The Asian collection has an impression of Hokusai's 'The Great Wave'. The Egyptian collection is home to 'William', the blue faience hippopotamus who is the museum's unofficial mascot. The drawings and prints collection includes work by Albrecht Dürer.
Our own favourites are the modern and contemporary rooms, with works by Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky, Modigliani and Henri Rousseau.
Tate Modern, London
London also spoils you for choice. For sheer invention and atmosphere, our favourite is Tate Modern, which stands on the bank of the Thames in a former power station.
It opened in 2000, and is the sister of Tate Britain in Pimlico, with a river boat running between the two. Its crowning feature is the Turbine Hall, a vast space several storeys high, used for temporary installations by leading contemporary artists. These have included 'Marsyas', a huge red structure by Anish Kapoor, and Ai Weiwei's 'Sunflower Seeds', made up of 100 million hand-made porcelain seeds.
The gallery is also known for the way it is arranged, by theme and not by date. Famous works here include Roy Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!', though with no chronology to guide you, you may have to wander for a while to find it.
The Palace Museum, Beijing
One of the most visited museums on the planet is in Beijing. The Palace Museum occupies the imperial palace known as the Forbidden City, in the centre of the city, which was the home of China's emperors from 1420 to 1912.
Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, this spectacular complex holds a vast collection of art and artefacts, including hundreds of thousands of pieces of ceramics and porcelain, tens of thousands of paintings, and a great array of jade and bronze. If you are interested in Chinese history, it is not to be missed.
Turn your home into a gallery
Whether you have a lot of travel photographs, a postcard from every gallery you have visited, or your eye on a print of a favourite painting, EasyFrame can help.
Our service is built around custom-made frames. Measure your picture, be it a photograph, a postcard, a print or a canvas, enter the size and choose your frame and mount.
You may not be able to visit a gallery every day, but a beautiful print in a good frame will liven up the walls at home.