Many important examples of topological spaces can be represented as a union of a finite or countable collection of metrizable subspaces. However, it is far from clear which spaces in general can be obtained in this way. Especially interesting is the case when the subspaces are dense in the union. We present below several results in this direction. In particular, we show that if a Tychono space $X$ is the union of a countable family of dense metrizable locally compact subspaces, then $X$ itself is metrizable and locally compact. We also prove a similar result for metrizable locally separable spaces. Notice in this connection that the union of two dense metrizable subspaces needn't be metrizable. Indeed, this is witnessed by a well-known space constructed by R. W. Heath.