In this exuberant celebration of the worlds museums, great and small, revered writers like Ann Patchett, Julian Barnes, Ali Smith, and more tell us about their favorite museums, including the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York, the Musee Rodin in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid. These essays, collected from the pages of The Economists Intelligent Life magazine, reveal the special hold that some museums have over us all. Acclaimed novelist William Boyd visits the Leopold Museum in Vienna--a shrine to his favorite artist, Egon Schiele, whom Boyd first discovered on a postcard as a University student. In front of her favorite Rodins, Allison Pearson recalls a traumatic episode she suffered at the hands of a schoolteacher following a trip to the Musee in Paris. Neil Gaiman admires the fantastic world depicted in British outsider artist Richard Dadds "The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke," a tiny painting that also decorated the foldout cover of a Queen album, housed in the Victorian room of Tate Britains Pre-Raphaelite collection. Ann Patchett fondly revisits Harvard Universitys Museum of Natural History--which she discovered at 19, while in the throes of summer romance with a biology student named Jack. Treasure Palaces is a treasure trove of wonders, a tribute to the diversity and power of the museums, the safe-keepers of our worlds most extraordinary artifacts, and an intimate look into the deeply personal reveries we fall into when before great art. -- Provided by publisher.

"These articles were originally published in Intelligent life, the ideas, lifestyle and culture magazine from The Economist Group, which is now known as 1843 magazine."--Title page verso "First published in 2016 by Profile Books Ltd. in Great Britain"--Title page verso.

Foreward /Rory Stewart -- Cabinets of wonder, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford / Frank Cottrell-Boyce -- Painting in stone, Museo Dell'Opificio Delle Pietre Dure, Florence / Margaret Drabble -- Sanctum in the city, The Frick Collection, New York / Don Paterson -- The wings of Capri, Villa San Michele, Capri / Ali Smith -- Spurned no longer, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne / Nicholas Serota -- Tim Winton -- The pity of war, In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres / Michael Morpurgo -- Love bade me welcome, The Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, MA / Ann Patchett -- A plaster cast in Copenhagen, Thorvaldsensmuseum, Copenhagen / Alan Hollinghurst -- Palais of the dolls, Musee de la Poupee, Paris / Jacqueline Wilson -- The Odessaphiles, Odessa State Literary Museum, Odessa / -- Preface / A. D. Miller -- A smiling shrunken goddess, Corinium Museum, Cirencester / Alice Oswalk -- Sons and mothers, Ensorhuis, Ostend / John Burnside -- A home from home, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Claire Messud -- Where Sibelius fell silent, Ainola, Jarvenpaa / Julian Barnes -- Wordsworth's continuous force, Dove Cottage, Grasmere / Maggie Fergusson -- Ann Wroe -- Agony to ecstasy, The Prado, Madrid / John Lanchester -- The museum of heartbreak, The Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb / Aminatta Forna -- The quiet theatres, The Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery, London / Andrew Motion -- A debt to Rudolph Leopold, Leopold Museum, Vienna / William Boyd -- Thank you for the music, ABBA: The Museum, Stockholm / -- There's life in these walls, The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York / Matthew Sweet -- Glasgow's palace of dreams, Kelvingrove, Glasgow / Andrew O'Hagan -- About the authors -- Illustrations. Roddy Doyle -- Rodin's sonnets in stone, Musee Rodin, Paris / Allison Pearson -- Cool under fire, The National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul /