Many museums are alive with the sound of music! Take note as we slide along the scale and give you the key to some museums of melody. We're sure they'll hit the perfect pitch. Just click and drag to explore each place.

Five centuries of music-making are represented in the The Royal College of Music Museum. Over 15,000 objects, including instruments, portraits, engravings, sculptures and photographs, offer a unique insight into musical practices across the ages.

Under the Rotonde de l'Empereur on the west wing of the Palais Garnier, the French national operahouse, you'll find the Bibliothèque-Musée. This library-museum displays three centuries of the Paris Opera's history through paintings, costumes, and set designs.

While you're here, take a look at the rest of the building. For over 150 years, royalty, nobility, and celebrities have graced this grand marble staircase.

Of all composers, perhaps none are more famous than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The musician travelled all over Europe, but he was born in this town house, in Salzburg, Austria. Take a visit to learn more about his early talent, and to see his personal violin and clavichord.

As Mozart aged, a successor was found in the young Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in this house in Bonn, Germany, in 1770. The modern museum includes an archive, library, publishing house, and music hall, and runs special exhibitions several times a year.

In Berlin, you'll find the Musikinstrumenten-Museum. This institution holds a staggering 3500 items dating back to the 16th Century. Surprisingly, many of these historic exhibits are still working, and are played in special performances.

Antonín Dvořák was one of the few Czech composers to achieve worldwide fame during his lifetime. In 1932, to honour the composer, the city of Prague decided to convert an 18th century Baroque house into the Antonín Dvořák Museum, complete with his piano and viola.

Besides preserving artefacts from Dvořák’s life and times, the Antonín Dvořák Museum frequently hosts live classical music events. The museum also holds special celebrations on the day of Dvořák’s death (1 May) and the day before his birth (8 September).

Nearby, in the former kitchens of Hořovice Castle, you'll find an unusual collection dedicated to musical instruments that work automatically; jukeboxes, clockwork music boxes, barrel organs, and orchestrions.

Orchestral music is fine, but sometimes you just need to say, Roll Over Beethoven. Liverpool, home of The Beatles is also home to the Beatles Museum, just across the road from the world-famous Cavern Club. If you're a Day Tripper, then head inside and Tell Me What You See.

Inspired by The Beatles Museum, ABBA: The Museum opened in Stockholm in 2013 (you could say, the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself). Inside you'll find interactive exhibits, recreations of famous ABBA locations, costumes, and waxwork models.

The US may have given us rock n roll, blues, and hip hop, but there's no genre more American than Country. Here, visitors are immersed in the history and sound of country music, its origins and traditions, and the stories and voices of many of its most famous stars.

Membership of the Country Music Hall of Fame is the highest honour a country music professional can receive. From Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers to Dean Dillon and Marty Stuart, they're all memorialised here in bronze casts.

The Mona Lisa is, in the words of one critic, "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world." It's hard to argue with that, but how much do you really know about this unmistakable masterpiece?

Actually, there's at least four different versions painted by Leonardo da Vinci and his students. But the one we all know and love is at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The others can be found at the Prado Museum and in numerous private collections.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Mona Lisa was actually relatively unknown. Until 1911, that is, when it was stolen from the Louvre. The high profile theft, and the appeals for its return, ironically helped publicise and popularise the painting.

The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire came under suspicion and was arrested and imprisoned. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso, who was brought in for questioning. Thankfully, the pair were soon cleared of all charges.

How much is the Mona Lisa worth? Well, it's recognised in the Guinness Book of Records as having the most expensive insurance policy in history, valued at $100 million in 1962, equivalent to $650 million in 2018. But, as the French aren't selling, it's literally priceless.

The painting depicts a woman sat in front of a mountainous landscape. Some have claimed the towering mountains show the influence of chinese artists, but it's thought by most to be the Val di Chiana, a valley in Tuscany.

If you look closely, you can see she's actually wearing a veil. Bruno Mottin, an expert at the Louvre, believes this is a guarnello, which was traditionally used by women while pregnant or just after giving birth.

The Taj Mahal was built in Agra, India, between 1632–53, by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a monument to his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and a mausoleum for his own body. Its gleaming white marble walls are complemented by the verdant gardens that surround it.

Step through the darwaza, or 'Great Gate', and take in the vista before you. Influenced by traditional Persian designs, the garden is split into four symmetrical sections divided by stone paths and pools of water.

Trees line the pathways, providing shade from the hot Indian sun, as well as fruits and fragrances to please the senses. Early visitors to the gardens also describe in lush detail the roses and daffodils.

This reflecting pool is known as the al Hawd al-Kawthar, the Pool of Abundance, in reference to the pool of paradise as described to Muhammad in the Qur'an.

The similarity in layout and architecture of the Taj Mahal gardens with the Shalimar Gardens in Jammu and Kashmir suggests that both may have been made by the same architect, Ali Mardan.

Standing on the resplendent platform of the Taj Mahal itself, the view back across the gardens is unparalleled. It's easy to see why this is widely considered the jewel in the crown of Islamic architecture in India.

On the other bank of the River Yamnua, perfectly aligned with the Taj Mahal, lies the Mehtab Bagh, or Moonlight Garden. Like the gardens of the Taj Mahal, this was filled with fruit trees, white plaster walkways, pavilions, pools, and fountains.