Top 20 Most Visited Museums in USA | Art, History, and More!

The most visited museums in the USA are spread across six cities, and the good news for travellers is that several of the biggest cost nothing to enter. Washington, DC runs the free Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, New York holds the Met, MoMA and the American Museum of Natural History, and Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Houston each have one or two museums that people plan a whole trip around. This guide ranks 20 of them for art, history, science and space, with the ticket price, the time you need, the one gallery you should not miss and the catch the brochures skip.

If you are still at the planning stage, read our United States travel guide first, then check flights to the USA into New York, Washington Dulles or Chicago O'Hare, the three hubs that put most of this list within a short ride. Museum days are easy to build around a city break: most open around 10 am, the big ones need half a day, and many offer one free or cheaper evening each week.

How we picked these 20 museums: We started from published attendance figures (The Art Newspaper survey and the Smithsonian's own visitor counts for 2025), then kept a geographic spread so the list helps whichever US city you land in. Prices, opening rules and recent changes were checked against museum announcements and visitor pages in October 2026. Art, natural history, national history and space museums are mixed, because most travellers want one of each.

The 20 museums cover 9 cities, 7 of them are free to enter, and the Met alone drew about 6 million visitors in 2025.

Quick comparison of the most visited museums in the USA

The table compares cities, prices and the time each museum needs; full entries follow below. Prices are standard adult tickets.

Top 20 most visited museums in the USA: full guide

Each entry gives the address, the adult price, the best time to go and the exhibit that justifies the visit. The order starts with the national museums in New York and Washington, then moves west and south.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met, the Manhattan art museum at the top of this list, is the busiest museum in the country. The Art Newspaper counted almost 6 million visitors in 2025, helped by the reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing with its art from Africa, Oceania and the ancient Americas. The main building sits on Fifth Avenue at the edge of Central Park, and it holds about 5,000 years of art under one roof: the Temple of Dendur in its glass hall, the arms and armor court with mounted knights, the American Wing period rooms, and European paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Nobody sees it all in a day. Pick two wings and accept the rest for a second visit. The rooftop garden opens in the warmer months and gives one of the better free views across the park to the Midtown towers. Your ticket also covers The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park on the same date, a quiet medieval branch built from pieces of real European monasteries. The honest catch: the Great Hall is crowded from opening on weekends, and the bag check queue can eat 20 minutes.

• Location: 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side
• Admission: $30 adults; NY State residents pay what they wish
• Best time: Weekday mornings; Friday and Saturday evenings
• Do not miss: Temple of Dendur, Arms and Armor, rooftop

First-time New York visitors get the most from it. Use the 81st Street ground-floor entrance and you skip the queue on the front steps.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC

Free to enter and standing on the National Mall, this science museum counted 3.3 million visits in 2025, more than any other museum in the Smithsonian family. The rotunda elephant greets you at the Mall entrance, and from there the floors split into dinosaurs and fossils in the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils, the ocean hall with its life-size North Atlantic right whale model, human origins, and the gems and minerals gallery on the second floor where the Hope Diamond sits in a rotating case. Children head straight for the live insect zoo and the tarantula feedings. Because entry is free, people pop in for an hour and leave, which makes late afternoon calmer than the morning school-group rush. Bring snacks in a sealed bag and eat outside on the Mall; the cafe is busy at lunch. The building connects easily on foot to the Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art and the African American history museum, so you can plan a whole Mall day without a taxi.

• Location: 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW
• Admission: Free, no ticket needed
• Best time: After 2 pm on weekdays
• Do not miss: Hope Diamond, Hall of Fossils, Ocean Hall

Families with children of mixed ages do well here. Go upstairs to the gems first, before the crowds climb the stairs.

National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC

Aviation and space history fill the flagship building on the Mall, which shows the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer, the Apollo 11 command module Columbia and the Spirit of St. Louis. It has been in the middle of a long renovation that reopens galleries in phases. Part of the museum stays closed while that work finishes, so check which halls are open before you build your day around one object. Entry is free, but you need a free timed-entry pass, booked online. Opening hours run 10 am to 5:30 pm every day except December 25. The newer galleries are excellent: interactive flight halls, a planetary science gallery and a section on how flight changed everyday life. Pair it with the much larger Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport (number 20 on this list), which holds the aircraft too big for downtown. The common mistake is arriving without a pass on a holiday weekend, when walk-up entry is not guaranteed.

• Location: 650 Jefferson Drive SW, National Mall
• Admission: Free; timed-entry pass required
• Hours: 10 am to 5:30 pm daily (closed December 25)
• Do not miss: 1903 Wright Flyer, Apollo 11 module

Aviation fans and school-age children are the natural audience. Book the pass as soon as your travel dates are fixed.

National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC

Opened on the Mall in 2016, this bronze-clad history and culture museum is still one of the hardest Smithsonian tickets to get, so book ahead. Free timed-entry passes are required for every visitor, whatever their age. Advance passes are released 30 days ahead on a rolling basis, and a batch of same-day passes goes online each morning at 8:15 am Eastern time. The visit works like a descent and a climb. You take an elevator down to the lowest level and walk upward through the transatlantic slave trade, the founding of the nation, segregation and the civil rights movement, emerging into galleries on music, sport, film and community life. Allow at least four hours; many people need a full day. The Sweet Home Cafe is worth planning lunch around, with regional menus from the Agricultural South, the Creole Coast and other areas. The history galleries are emotionally heavy, and the quiet Contemplative Court with its falling water is there for a reason.

• Location: 1400 Constitution Avenue NW
• Admission: Free; timed-entry pass required
• Passes: Released 30 days ahead; same-day at 8:15 am ET
• Do not miss: History galleries, Contemplative Court

Come here if you want the American story in depth, and give it at least half a day, starting at the bottom.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Two buildings of free art face each other across a plaza on the Mall. The neoclassical West Building holds European and American art from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci on public view in the Americas, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci. The I. M. Pei East Building carries the modern and contemporary collection, with a rooftop terrace and a big blue rooster sculpture looking toward the Capitol. An underground concourse links the two, with a moving light installation and a cafe. Entry is free and there is no ticket for the permanent galleries, which makes it the easiest major art museum in the country to visit at short notice. In winter the Sculpture Garden next door becomes an ice rink. The caveat is size: the West Building alone has well over a hundred rooms, so pick a period and stay with it.

• Location: Constitution Avenue between 3rd and 9th Streets NW
• Admission: Free
• Best time: Weekday afternoons; Sunday mornings
• Do not miss: Ginevra de' Benci, East Building roof terrace

Art lovers on a budget should put it first. The underground concourse lets you switch buildings without going outside.

American Museum of Natural History, New York

Across Central Park from the Met on the Upper West Side, this is the science museum where generations of New Yorkers met their first dinosaur. The fourth-floor fossil halls hold the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Barosaurus rearing up in the rotunda, and the blue whale model hangs over the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. The Richard Gilder Center, opened in 2023, added a canyon-like atrium, a live butterfly vivarium and an insectarium, and the Rose Center for Earth and Space houses the Hayden Planetarium. New York State residents can pay what they wish for general admission; visitors from elsewhere pay a fixed price, with planetarium shows and special exhibitions sold as add-ons. Buy online to choose the bundle you want. The building is a maze of corridors and dioramas, and staff maps help. Weekends between 11 am and 2 pm are very busy, especially in winter when families look for an indoor day.

• Location: 200 Central Park West at 79th Street
• Admission: Fixed ticket; NY residents pay what they wish
• Best time: Weekdays at opening
• Do not miss: Fossil halls, Gilder Center, blue whale

Families and science lovers get a full day out of it. Book a planetarium time slot first, then plan the halls around it.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

In Midtown on West 53rd Street, MoMA holds the modern icons everyone knows from posters: Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Monet's Water Lilies panels, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Frida Kahlo self-portraits. Since the 2019 expansion the collection rotates more often, so a painting you came for may be on loan or rehung, and the fifth floor (1880s to 1940s) is where most first-timers start. Adult admission is $30. The sculpture garden with its Rodin and Picasso pieces is the calm centre of the building and a good place to reset. The design and architecture galleries are underrated: chairs, posters, early computers and the original set of emoji. The honest caveat is the crowd around the famous canvases at midday; arrive at opening and go straight to the fifth floor, then work down. The museum also runs free Friday evening entry for New York State residents.

• Location: 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown
• Admission: $30 adults
• Best time: At opening, straight to the 5th floor
• Do not miss: The Starry Night, sculpture garden

If you like modern art and have only a few hours, this is the stop. Buying online skips the ticket desk line.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Frank Lloyd Wright's white spiral on Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile opened in 1959, and the building itself is the reason many people visit, whatever is showing. The galleries line a continuous ramp that winds up around a skylit rotunda, so the usual approach is to take the elevator to the top and walk down. Shows in the rotunda change several times a year and range from big retrospectives to single contemporary artists. The permanent Thannhauser collection, in a side tower, holds Impressionist and early modern works by Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Picasso, plus an outstanding group of Kandinsky paintings. Adult admission is $30. A visit takes about two hours, which makes it easy to pair with the Met ten blocks south. The building is listed as part of the UNESCO Frank Lloyd Wright group. A practical warning: the ramp is gently sloped but long, and photography rules can change with each exhibition.

• Location: 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
• Admission: $30 adults
• Time needed: About 2 hours
• Do not miss: The rotunda ramp, Thannhauser Kandinskys

Architecture lovers will enjoy it most. Ride up, walk down, and look back across the rotunda from each level.

National September 11 Memorial and Museum, New York

At the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, two square reflecting pools sit in the footprints of the Twin Towers, with the names of the 2,983 victims of the 2001 and 1993 attacks cut into bronze around the edges. The memorial plaza is free and open daily from 8 am to 8 pm. The history museum underneath takes visitors down to bedrock level, past the "Survivors' Stairs", the slurry wall that held back the Hudson, and twisted steel from the towers. Museum hours are 9 am to 7 pm Wednesday to Monday, with last entry at 5:30 pm, and it closes on most Tuesdays. Advance tickets are required. Plan two to three hours and something quiet afterwards, because the historical exhibition with recorded voices from that morning is hard going. The Oculus transit hall next door and the observation deck at One World Trade Center make the area easy to combine into one morning.

• Location: 180 Greenwich Street, Lower Manhattan
• Admission: Memorial free; museum ticketed, book ahead
• Hours: Museum 9 am to 7 pm, closed most Tuesdays
• Getting there: WTC Cortlandt or Fulton Street stations

It explains modern New York better than any other site. Take an early slot and walk to the pools afterwards.

Art Institute of Chicago

Guarded by two bronze lions on Michigan Avenue in Grant Park, the top-rated Art Institute holds one of the strongest Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections outside Paris. Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte fills a wall, and the same floor has Monet haystacks, Caillebotte's rainy Paris street and a run of Van Gogh. The American galleries hold Grant Wood's American Gothic and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, two of the most reproduced American paintings. Downstairs, the Thorne Miniature Rooms are a cult favourite: 68 tiny period interiors built at one-twelfth scale. The Modern Wing by Renzo Piano opens onto a bridge over to Millennium Park and the Cloud Gate sculpture. General admission for non-resident adults is $32, Illinois and Chicago residents pay less, and children under 14 enter free. Thursday evenings are quieter than weekends.

• Location: 111 South Michigan Avenue
• Admission: $32 non-resident adults; under 14 free
• Best time: Weekday mornings, Thursday evenings
• Do not miss: La Grande Jatte, Nighthawks, Thorne Rooms

For art in Chicago, start here. The Modern Wing bridge drops you straight into Millennium Park when you leave.

Field Museum, Chicago

SUE and Maximo are the two names to know at the Field Museum, the science museum on Chicago's lakefront Museum Campus. SUE is one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found, and Maximo, a cast of a titanosaur, stretches 122 feet and stands 38 feet tall at the head in Stanley Field Hall. The Evolving Planet galleries walk through four billion years of life, and the Ancient Egypt exhibit lets you step inside a reconstructed mastaba tomb with real mummies nearby. The Pawnee earth lodge and the Cyrus Tang Hall of China are quieter rooms worth a detour. Basic admission covers the permanent halls, while 3D films and some special exhibitions cost extra; adult prices sit in the mid-$20s to around $30 depending on the package. The Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium share the campus, a short walk away, so many visitors buy a combined pass. Bring a jacket in spring and autumn; the wind off Lake Michigan is serious.

• Location: 1400 South DuSable Lake Shore Drive
• Admission: Basic ticket, extras for films and shows
• Best time: Weekday mornings outside school holidays
• Do not miss: SUE, Maximo, Inside Ancient Egypt

Dinosaur fans should not skip it. A CityPASS-style bundle adds the Shedd Aquarium next door.

Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

Still called MSI by most Chicagoans, this hands-on science museum in Hyde Park took the Griffin name in 2024 after a major gift from Ken Griffin. It occupies the Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the biggest building left from that fair, in Jackson Park. Inside you will find the U-505, a German submarine captured by the US Navy in 1944 and now the only one of its type in the United States, plus a full-size replica coal mine, a Boeing 727, a working tornado vortex and a model railroad that runs from Chicago to Seattle. General admission is about $26 for adults, and the "experiences" such as the U-505 on-board tour and the coal mine are paid add-ons with timed slots that sell out on busy days. Allow a full day with children. The location is further south than the Loop museums, so use the Metra Electric train to 55th-56th-57th Street or a bus along the lake.

• Location: 5700 South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Hyde Park
• Admission: About $26 adults; add-ons extra
• Time needed: A full day with children
• Getting there: Metra Electric to 55th-56th-57th St

Families and engineering fans will fill the day easily. Reserve the U-505 tour time when you buy your ticket.

Getty Center, Los Angeles

Richard Meier's travertine campus in Brentwood sits on a hilltop above the 405 freeway, and the ride up on the driverless tram from the parking structure is part of the experience. Entry is free with a timed reservation; the cost is parking, at $25 per car, dropping to $15 after 3 pm. The art collection covers European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts and photography, with Van Gogh's Irises as the headline. Many visitors spend as long outdoors as in the galleries: the Central Garden by Robert Irwin spirals down to a maze of azaleas, and the terraces look across Los Angeles to the Pacific on a clear day. The museum is closed on Mondays and stays open to 9 pm on Saturdays, when sunset from the terraces is the best show in town. Its sister site, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, focuses on Greek and Roman antiquities and needs a separate reservation.

• Location: 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles
• Admission: Free with reservation; parking $25 ($15 after 3 pm)
• Hours: Closed Mondays; open to 9 pm Saturdays
• Do not miss: Irises, Central Garden, sunset terraces

Couples and photographers love the terraces. On a Saturday, arrive after 3 pm for cheaper parking and the sunset.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

LACMA, on the Miracle Mile, is the largest art museum in the western United States, and its new galleries changed it in 2026. The David Geffen Galleries, a long, curving concrete building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that spans Wilshire Boulevard, opened on April 19, 2026 and adds about 110,000 square feet of exhibition space. The permanent collection now hangs in mixed displays that put art from different cultures side by side. Outside, Chris Burden's Urban Light, a grid of restored cast-iron street lamps, is one of the most photographed spots in Los Angeles, and Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass, a 340-ton boulder over a walkway, is free to walk under. The La Brea Tar Pits and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures are next door, so the Miracle Mile works as a museum district. Parking is in paid structures on Sixth Street and Wilshire, and the new Metro D Line extension is bringing rail closer to the area.

• Location: 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile
• Admission: Paid; LA County residents get discounts
• Best time: Late afternoon into Urban Light at dusk
• Do not miss: David Geffen Galleries, Urban Light

Treat it as the anchor of a Miracle Mile day, with the La Brea Tar Pits next door.

Philadelphia Art Museum

At the top of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the museum now calls itself the Philadelphia Art Museum, and most visitors still arrive by running up the 72 front steps like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. In 2026 the original Rocky statue was moved inside for the exhibition Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments, and the museum has said it will be installed permanently at the top of the steps afterwards. Inside, the collection runs to about 240,000 objects, with a medieval cloister, a Japanese teahouse, a Hindu temple hall reassembled from India, Marcel Duchamp's largest group of works anywhere, and Cezanne's Large Bathers. General adult admission is $30 and visitors 18 and under enter free. Pay-what-you-wish nights run on Fridays, and the first Sunday of each month is also pay what you wish. The Barnes Foundation and the Rodin Museum are a short walk down the Parkway.

• Location: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
• Admission: $30 adults; 18 and under free
• Best time: Friday pay-what-you-wish evenings
• Do not miss: The steps, Duchamp galleries, the cloister

You get serious art and a famous photo in one stop. Run the steps early in the morning, before tour groups arrive.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Almost every culture and period appears somewhere in the MFA, the encyclopedic art museum on Huntington Avenue in Fenway, but three areas stand out. Its Egyptian and Nubian collections are among the best outside Cairo, built from the museum's own excavations at Giza in the early twentieth century. The Japanese collection is one of the largest outside Japan. And the Art of the Americas wing holds John Singleton Copley portraits, Paul Revere's Sons of Liberty Bowl and John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Sargent also painted the murals in the rotunda. Adult tickets are around $30, and the museum is closed on Tuesdays. Allow three hours and add the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a ten-minute walk away, for a Venetian-style palace with a flowering courtyard and the empty frames from the famous 1990 art theft. The Green Line E branch stops right outside at Museum of Fine Arts station.

• Location: 465 Huntington Avenue, Fenway
• Admission: About $30 adults
• Hours: Closed Tuesdays
• Getting there: Green Line E to Museum of Fine Arts

History and art sit together well here. Do the MFA in the morning and the Gardner after lunch.

The National WWII Museum, New Orleans

What started as the D-Day Museum in 2000 now fills several buildings in the Warehouse District, an immersive history museum designated by Congress as the country's official WWII museum. Each visitor gets a dog tag card linked to the story of a real serviceman or woman, followed through the exhibitions. The Road to Berlin and Road to Tokyo galleries recreate snowy Ardennes forest and jungle landscapes, and the US Freedom Pavilion hangs a B-17 Flying Fortress and other aircraft above the floor. Beyond All Boundaries, a 4D film narrated by Tom Hanks, is worth the add-on. General adult admission is $37, and the museum opens daily from 9 am to 5 pm, closing on Mardi Gras Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Two days is not too much for enthusiasts. The streetcar on St. Charles Avenue stops a few blocks away at Lee Circle.

• Location: 945 Magazine Street, New Orleans
• Admission: $37 adults
• Hours: 9 am to 5 pm daily
• Do not miss: Road to Berlin, Beyond All Boundaries

History buffs can lose a whole day inside. Get the ticket that includes the film and allow at least five hours.

Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Dearborn

Ten miles west of downtown Detroit, this vast hall of invention tells the American story through objects you can stand next to. The bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery in 1955 is here, and you can step inside and sit down. So are presidential limousines, the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in at Ford's Theatre, a Dymaxion House by Buckminster Fuller, early Ford assembly line cars and a 1940s Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The museum opens daily from 9:30 am to 5 pm and closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Adult online tickets are $34, with a fee for buying at the door. The campus also includes Greenfield Village, an outdoor history park with working farms and Thomas Edison's Menlo Park lab, and the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, each ticketed separately. Seeing all three takes two days. You need a car or rideshare from Detroit.

• Location: 20900 Oakwood Boulevard, Dearborn, Michigan
• Admission: $34 adults online
• Hours: 9:30 am to 5 pm daily
• Do not miss: Rosa Parks bus, Dymaxion House

Road-trippers and car lovers should make the detour. The Rouge Factory Tour shows trucks being built today.

Space Center Houston

As the official visitor centre for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, home of Mission Control, Space Center Houston is built around its NASA tram tour. The tour into the working campus is included with admission, runs about 45 minutes and stops at Rocket Park, where a complete Saturn V lies on its side in a long hall. Tour routes vary by day and can include the historic Apollo Mission Control room or astronaut training facilities. Back in the main building you can walk through Independence, a shuttle replica mounted on the original NASA 905 carrier aircraft, see moon rocks you can touch and check out the latest Artemis exhibits. Adult admission starts at $29.95 and goes up on peak dates, and buying online is cheaper than at the gate. Plan four to six hours. It is about 25 miles south of downtown Houston, so drive or book a tour; public transport is slow.

• Location: 1601 E NASA Parkway, Houston
• Admission: From $29.95 adults (date-based)
• Time needed: 4 to 6 hours
• Do not miss: Rocket Park Saturn V, Independence shuttle

Space fans of every age leave happy. Catch the first tram of the day, because queues build by late morning.

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia

Near Dulles, beside Washington Dulles International Airport, the Air and Space Museum's companion site is where the Smithsonian keeps the aircraft that never fit downtown, and you enter free with no pass. Two giant hangars hold Space Shuttle Discovery, which flew 39 missions, an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay, a Concorde and hundreds of other aircraft, many hung at angles from the ceiling as if in flight. The observation tower looks over the Dulles runways, and the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar has a mezzanine where you can watch conservators at work. No timed pass is needed, and it opens 10 am to 5:30 pm daily except December 25. Parking is charged. If you are flying into Dulles with a long layover or an evening departure, this is one of the best uses of a few hours near any US airport, since it sits only minutes from the terminal by taxi.

• Location: 14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly, VA
• Admission: Free; no pass needed; paid parking
• Hours: 10 am to 5:30 pm daily
• Do not miss: Space Shuttle Discovery, SR-71

A long Dulles layover is reason enough to come. Climb the observation tower to watch planes land.

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How to plan a museum trip across the United States

Choose the city first and the museums second. The distances in the United States are large, and the museums on this list sit in clusters: the National Mall in Washington, Museum Mile and Midtown in New York, the lakefront Museum Campus in Chicago, and the Wilshire and Brentwood areas of Los Angeles. One cluster fills two or three days. Two clusters on one trip usually means a domestic flight or a long Amtrak ride, which works well between Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston on the Northeast Corridor.

Budget is the second filter. A family of four can spend $120 or more on a single morning at a paid New York museum, while the same day on the National Mall costs only lunch. Many travellers mix the two: free Smithsonian days, then one or two paid icons where the collection is truly unique, such as the Met or the Art Institute of Chicago. Book a hotel within walking distance of your main cluster, because parking near city-centre museums is expensive and slow.

Interest is the last filter. Art lovers should give New York three days and add Chicago or Los Angeles. History travellers get the most from Washington, New Orleans and Dearborn. Space fans can link the two Air and Space sites in the Washington area with Space Center Houston. If you are comparing with Europe, our guide to the best museums in London shows how the free national museum model works there, and our list of famous landmarks in the USA covers the sights outside museum walls.

Entry to the country is a separate question from entry to the museums. Whether you need a visa or can travel on an ESTA under the Visa Waiver Program depends on your passport, so check the official US State Department travel site for your nationality early, and see our visa services page if you need help with the application.

Tips for visiting museums in the USA

Book timed passes early and arrive at opening. Even free museums such as the African American history museum and Air and Space on the Mall need passes that go fast in spring and summer, the Getty needs a reservation, and the first hour is the quietest at almost every museum on this list.

• Book timed slots early. Free entry still needs a pass at some museums. Passes for the African American history museum and Air and Space on the Mall go fast in spring and summer, and the Getty needs a reservation.
• Arrive at opening. The first hour is the quietest at almost every museum here. Go straight to the most famous gallery, then explore the rest as crowds build.
• Pack light. Large bags and backpacks often go through security and a cloakroom. A small bag gets you inside faster, and many museums ban bags over a set size.
• Use evening openings. Friday and Saturday late openings at the Met, MoMA, the Getty and the Philadelphia Art Museum are calmer and sometimes cheaper.
• Check resident discounts. Several museums give lower prices or pay-what-you-wish entry to residents of their city or state. Students with an ID often pay less too.
• Plan lunch outside. Museum cafes are crowded and pricey at noon. Eating at 11:30 am or after 2 pm, or picnicking on the Mall, saves time and money.

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