I really enjoyed my visit to the Courtauld Gallery in London, it's a little below the radar which is good actually. It's small and manageable, easy to get to, has a good varied selection of art, and then has a nice cafe for a pickmeup afterwards.
Just be aware that they have special exhibitions running, and you can't just walk up and get tix for those. They seem to sell our far in advance, but there is still plenty to see without that.
Courtauld is definitely not on most tourist's radar. I finally went on what was my 7th visit to London I believe. Great small museum, perfectly suited to visit maybe on your first day when you still shaking off the jet lag.
At the risk of being argumentative, the Courtauld is well known to travelers focusing on viewing major art collections.
I certainly agree with both above posts that the collection is excellent.
It's definitely in Rick's book that is where we learned about it. I just couldn't deal with the British Museum (too big), had enough trouble with the Nat Gal.
Also wanted to do the Wallace but ran out of time.
The Courtauld was closed for a while in recent years; I think part of the building work involved expanding the exhibition space. I imagine the closure had an effect on the number of mentions it received on the forum. I agree it's very worthwhile (especially for folks interested in Impressionism) and very accessible.
