Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, at 25 Evans Way in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, is a Venetian-style palace built in 1903 by the art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner to house her collection. Its centerpiece is a four-story glass-roofed courtyard filled with flowers, sculpture and classical architectural fragments, which changes with the seasons. Around it, galleries hold more than 2,500 objects, including paintings by Titian, Rembrandt, Botticelli and John Singer Sargent, as well as tapestries, furniture and manuscripts. Gardner's will specified that the arrangement of the collection should not be changed, so the rooms look much as they did in her lifetime. Empty frames mark the spaces where thirteen works were stolen in a 1990 heist that remains unsolved, which is one of the museum's best-known stories. A modern wing added in 2012 by Renzo Piano contains temporary exhibitions, a cafe, a greenhouse and a concert hall. Visitors typically spend 1.5 to 2.5 hours, and admission is about $20 to $25 per adult, with anyone named Isabella entering free. The museum is typically open Wednesday to Monday from 11am to 5pm and closed on Tuesday. The best photo angle is the courtyard from the first-floor Spanish cloister or the upper balconies, though interior photography rules restrict some areas, so check at the entrance. Crowds are heaviest on weekends and free-admission days, while weekday late mornings are calmer. The museum is a short walk from the Museum of Fine Arts and the Green Line E branch, so the two are often paired.