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[Editor's note: It's Labor Day, so your devoted Flavorwire team is taking a break. To keep you entertained, we're leaving you with our most popular features of the summer months. This post originally ran July 7th.]
This week, we were blown away by this gorgeous concept for a “spiral garden museum” in Taipei, which sadly didn’t make it into the final round of the design competition and thus will never become a reality. Though we’re disappointed, the project reminded us of the gloriously beautiful museums that already exist in our wide world, so to bind our wounds over the Taipei garden museum (and to indulge in a little architecture candy) we’ve collected twenty of the most lovely here. After all, what better way to store and display some of the world’s greatest artwork than in a structure as well-designed and beautiful as the art itself? Click through to see our picks for the most beautiful museums from all over the world, and if we’ve missed your favorite — or if the Guggenheim makes you gag — let us know which ones you’d choose in the comments!

The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. Designed by I. M. Pei. Photos via and via.