The Wallace Collection

There are bigger galleries in London, there are more comprehensive ones. But is there a gallery in the capital with the same charm that the Wallace Collection has? I think not.

It's something to do with the way that, for all it's big-name masterpieces, (there are Titians and Rembrandts here), it still feels like a family collection. And of course in a sense it is; made up of the favourite pieces from the collections of the first four Marquesses of Hertford, and Sir Richard Wallace. To continue the theme the whole caboodle is displayed in their effortlessly elegant London townhouse.

"The cream of 17th and 18th-century art, shot through with the oddities that only a family collection has."