Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Tickets, the Courtyard Garden & Visitor Guide to a One-of-a-Kind Museum

⏱ 1.5-2.5 hours👤 All ages$$

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a singular Boston collector and patron, and the museum she opened in 1903 is as much a work of art as the pieces it holds. She built it to resemble a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, with galleries arranged around a breathtaking glass-roofed interior courtyard filled with flowers and greenery that change with the seasons — the heart of the building and one of the most beautiful interior spaces in the city.

The collection spans Renaissance and Baroque European paintings, sculpture, tapestries, rare books, and decorative arts gathered across Gardner's travels, including works by Titian, Rembrandt, Botticelli, and others. Per the terms of her will, the galleries are kept essentially as she arranged them, which gives the museum an intimate, idiosyncratic, lived-in quality very different from a conventional art museum.

It's also famous for tragedy: in March 1990, thieves disguised as police stole 13 works — including pieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer — in what remains the largest unsolved art heist in history. Because the will forbids rearranging the collection, the empty frames still hang in place, a haunting presence in the galleries. A modern wing designed by Renzo Piano added exhibition and performance space. The museum sits in the Fenway, a short walk from the MFA, and famously admits anyone named Isabella for free.