Museum Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence

You're standing at the Uffizi in Florence, one of the most famous art museums in the world. Take a moment to look around. You're in a long, narrow courtyard between two almost identical façades. At the far end there's an open colonnade, and beyond it the River Arno. Architectural historians call this the first regularised streetscape in Europe. The architect, Giorgio Vasari, was a painter too, and it shows. The unbroken cornices along the roof and between the floors pull your eye straight down towards the river. Now look at the niches between the columns. They hold statues of famous artists, added in the nineteenth century.