For the hordes of tourists stuck in lines for the Colosseum or queuing up to enter the Sistine Chapel, Rome’s 2,000-year history acts as a powerful magnet.

A 1,700-square-foot museum devoted to pioneer neurosurgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing, located in a sub-basement of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at the Yale School of Medicine.

A 5,490-square-foot museum devoted to water and its history in Lanjarón, a Granada spa town on the southern end of the Sierra Nevada.

Francisco “Patxi” Mangado, the 54-year-old Spanish architect, compares his bronze-clad Archaeological Museum of Álava in Vitoria, Spain, to a “coffer guarding a treasure.”

A three-level, 6,000-square-foot center for the Aurora Historical Society, located in the city's downtown historic district.

Some see a frozen tear clinging to the “cheek” of the new Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Others see a melting crystal.

Charged with adding expansive and flexible exhibition space to the museum's campus, the Renzo Piano team—who were responsible for the neighboring Broad Contemporary Art Museum, completed in 2008—designed an open-plan pavilion large enough to accommodate large-scale works or several separate exhibitions simultaneously.

A ten-story, 210,510-square-foot museum of the city of Antwerp, with exhibition galleries, a restaurant, an event space, and a panoramic terrace, as well as a plaza that includes a museum shop and a mosaic by Luc Tuymans.

In 1968, the year before the Oakland Museum opened, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: “In terms of architecture and environment, Oakland may be the most thoughtfully revolutionary museum in the world.”