Visiting museums and art galleries is an essential part of the experience of visiting new places. That is not to say that I do not from time to time visit museums in this country with which I am already familiar but the collections which 
tend to stand out in my mind are those which are housed in a building either especially made for the purpose of displaying the paintings, furniture and sculpture or are even in the artist’s own house or the house of a major collector. I visit these more often in a town or city in a foreign country because while visiting foreign parts it is likely that there is more time available “to stand and stare”.
The Sorolla Museum in Madrid and the Jacquemart-Andre Museum in Paris, “the passion of Edouard Andre and Nelie Jacquemart,” are collections housed in the artist’s and the collectors’ houses respectively, whereas the magnificent Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid is in a refurbished palace designed to show off the fabulous collection of pictures collected by the late Baron Thyssen which he gave to the Spanish nation in honour of his Spanish wife Carmen.
