Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The building is beautiful, the collection is amazing, and the whole museum is so… individual. It has a world-class collection, but everything is displayed just as Isabella Stewart Gardner left it, which makes it really stand out from your average run of museums.

I couldn’t believe how absolutely beautiful the structure is! Being an as-time-allows backyard gardener I loved the center courtyard. I can’t imagine being fortunate enough to live in a place like this. Incredible place, even if you aren’t interested in museums (which I am!)

As others have posted, this is a most unusual and beautiful place, and a museum only in the sense that it houses/protects priceless art. It is otherworldly, and sometimes in the oddest way - there is a sense of something here that is difficult to explain and not entirely comfortable - in fact, the place can be unsettling. It is a curious combination of light and dark, and much more of the latter than some of the posts on this site might convey. It has a subtle, but very real, sense of the genuinely gothic, where there is a touch of shadow (and sometimes much more than a touch) behind everything and a feeling that can, at times, border on the sinister. Even a perfect spring day in the courtyard is never exactly what it seems - it is more like a mild fever-dream of a spring day. I am surprised that the place has not become a stock setting for any number of novels and films - Hitchcock should have LIVED here (and Ms. Gardner herself, a genuinely mysterious, goddess blonde, would surely have been a fitting muse).

In all, I obviously recommend the place most highly, but was simply surprised at how few posts commented on its unique energy.

Happily, I was able to see this museum before the big art theft. What a tragedy. It’s still well worth a visit, though!

Such a beautiful place …. almost something other than a museum, like from another world. Extraordinary place filled with lovely art from all over, with a peaceful, quietly refined atmosphere. If you’re ever in Boston, I very highly recommend visiting if you have a chance!