Before dawn on Sept. 8, thieves in southern France broke into what was Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir's last home, now a museum, and escaped with two of his paintings. In August, unmasked men absconded with a 200-carat Van Cleef & Arpels platinum and diamond necklace from Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts; thieves stole several Bronze Age objects—some crafted in 23.5 karat gold—from an archaeological museum in Villena, Spain; and criminals took four paintings by the 15th-century master Antonello da Messina from a Sicilian museum. (Estimated combined value: more than $100 million.)

Wittman

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Philadelphia

American art—definitionally—has had a checkered existence. Early artistic attempts were largely derivative of European art; Native American and folk art weren't taken seriously until recent decades, and decorative objects were deemed "industrial arts" for a long time. Not until the 19th century, with the birth of the Hudson River School, could the U.S. claim a native-born style and, even then, only in the mid-20th century, with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, did American art gain worldwide recognition.

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Gloucester, Mass.

In the 1930s and '40s, three friends—all artists, one almost a generation older than the others—spent their summers here, sketching and painting the picturesque environs of America's oldest continuously operating seaport. They are known for very different styles: Milton Avery (1885-1965) for his colorful, flat, figurative scenes; Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) for his abstractions, especially those featuring a sun-like orb over a burst of color; Mark Rothko (1903-1970) for his color-block paintings evoking emotion, not image.

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San Francisco

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San Francisco

They were ancient Italy's first great engineers, ambitious road-builders who drained land for development and showed the Romans how to build their famous aqueducts. They pioneered winemaking, loved banquets and included women in public life. They saw messages from the divine in thunder and lightning, bird flight and the entrails of sacrificed animals. And they developed an alphabet that evolved into the Roman letters used throughout Western civilization today.

Vanth

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