Probably Musee d’Orsay in Paris. It holds many of the most famous paintings ever. You can walk right up to each piece and get a close look. And it has several nice cafés where you can sit and have lunch or a coffee. It’s very chill.
By comparison, the Louvre is a mad house, the popular stuff is roped off, and the cafés are more like a snack bar.
If you’re into U.S. (pop) culture, I think it’s hard to beat the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. It’s got historic aircraft, movie props, costumes, etc. Fun stuff. And it’s mostly/all? free so you can spend the day going in and out, having lunch nearby in DC, seeing famous monuments right outside, etc.
Another one in the US is The Getty in LA. Absolutely gorgeous inside and out and also has an appearance in a ton of media, including the final shootout in GTA V. It was really surreal getting to walk through the place having seen it so many times before.
Air and Space in DC. You can touch a fucking piece of the moon!
The museum island in Berlin. Just so many interesting artifacts from ancient cultures, you could easily spend multiple days there. (Just don’t think too hard about what all those artifacts are doing in Berlin while you’re there…)
I’m still salty that the Pergamum temple exhibit was closed. We went to Turkey and “sorry, that temple is in Germany now.” We went to Berlin a few years later and “sorry, that temple exhibit is being refurbished now.”
All that being said, I enjoyed seeing that very large gold hat.
I just had a look, it’s closed for 14 years! I did go before the closure but I will say, it’s not good enough to wait 14 years for.
Rijksmuseum van oudheden in Leiden in the Netherlands.
As a kid in the early 80s I used to go there often. It was free then and had and still has a lot of artifacts from Egyptian, Roman and Greek history. Also Leiden is a nice place to visit anyway.
Also Museum Volkenkunde Leiden (now Wereldmuseum Leiden).
I’m enjoying this thread, I’ve been to many of the museums already mentioned and they’re all great.
For me I think my current favourite is the Natural History Museum in New York which I went to a couple of months ago. It was enormous and every room had a few really special things. I learnt so much!
My all time favourite is just so difficult. I really enjoyed The House of Terror in Budapest, I really didn’t know anything about the topic at all and I was thoroughly educated.
I’d also give a special mention to a museum in Rhodes that was full of sculptures they’d pulled from shipwrecks. The geography means there’s a lot of shipwrecks nearby and those date from ancient Greece onwards. The oldest sculptures were well rounded by the water and it gave them a very weird ethereal look.
The natural history museum in nyc is amazing. I went when I was there in January and loved it.
I nearly didn’t go because I’ve been to so many Natural History museums and I had a short time in New York, but then my friend reminded me that Ross from friends worked there and that tipped the scales.
It was so huge though, I got there at opening and there was genuinely a point where I realised I needed to speed up or I wouldn’t finish it before closing time! That’s without any of the special exhibitions too.
I visited Guedelon castle, a site were they are building a medieval castle the medievall way since 1997. It’s about two thirds finished now.
It’s surrounded by people working trades, just like back in the day. There’s a water mill, pottery, blacksmiths, masons, pigment makers and everything.
It’s living history, not in the American way were they pretend to be from the period, but people into crafts you can ask stuff.
It’s one of the more unique muséal expériences I’ve had.
I loved the visit too.
The work they do with historians is really interesting, when they need informations about how people where doing X at this period the historian guide them but sometimes the historian have several contradicting theories so they test the theory on the site and report to the historian which one is actually working.
I finally got to see a Saturn V up close last year, as well as the control room for the moon landings. I’ve always wanted to visit, and last year I found myself on a Houston work trip with a day to spare.
KSC museum in Cape Canaveral Florida is similarly awesome. They have tons of rockets and other stuff from the space race and shuttle eras
The main thing I took from KSC is that massive 50+ mile long road from the Orlando area towards Cape Canaveral, just such an American design.
The site and tour was amazing though - particularly the memorial set up like a space mirror, that was particularly poignant.
When I visited Florida a few years ago there weren’t any daytime launches - but I did hoof the youngest out of bed at 2am to watch from Orlando on a livestream and see the orange flame in the distance heading to the sky. The poor kid had a “bro wtf” look on his face but hey, there ain’t many British kids who can say they’ve seen a rocket go up into space.
Natural History Museum in London… before you even get to the exhibits it has some of the most breathtaking architecture.
I find that I’m both drawn the the building as well as the exhibits when I’m there, all the pillars are trees with texture and foliage (and monkeys too), the large room with the minerals has sea creatures carved onto the stonework. The carved wood, the floor even the outside with the metal drain pipes and tiled roof…it’s a Temple to Nature, really beautiful place!
The DaVinci museum in Venice is pretty really good. It’s not too big but it’s interactive and concise (especially considering the works of DaVinci).
The Steven Udvar Hazy museum in Dulles VA is another excellent air and space museum. And now that the National Air & Soace museum is being renovated it’s better honestly.
Another great one is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY. Lots of Buffalo Bill exhibits and the largest gun collection in the world. It’s easily a 2 day museum and unexpectedly great.
Omegamart in Vegas. Might not be a ‘museum’, but is a really cool interactive art facility.
Kennedy Space center is amazing.
The museum of flight in Seattle.
Natural history museum in NYC
And I really love history museums in different cities to learn about their past.
This is probably not in the same categories as other experiences, buuuut the Guinness museum in Dublin the evening before st Patrick’s day was quite fun!
There’s a large bar at the top/end of the museum and a band was playing and 100 or so people ended up in a conga line.
I think I had 4 tasty Guinness during the museum tour sand countless at the museum bar😅
The Computerspielemuseum or Computer Game Museum in Berlin.
It has 3 rooms setup as timecapsules with a console setup in each.
The highlight was the PainStation where you played Pong against another player, and the loser got whipped, an electric shock or heat applied to their hand through a panel on the game. Excellent.
Special mentions, 1.5hrs in front of Bosch’s, Garden of Earthly Delights tryptich in the Prado.
Momi (The Museum of the Moving Image, London) closed in 2002, but had the full history of all cinema. Live period actors jumping out to explain things. I snuck a touch of the foot of the actual K1 Giant Robot from Tom Baker’s Dr Who.
Also, the Musée d’Orsay. Just a beautiful experience of so many classics.
Seconding Computer games Museum in Berlin. I didn’t like the pain Station (the whip is way to harsh, I think) but beging able to try out so many older games is amazing.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles should get a mention for being so weird.
Singapore’s cultural history museum was my fave. Small but well designed and explained everything that led up to Singapore existing in a walking format. It wasn’t exactly large.
The Dalí museum in Figueres, Spain. Just nice whacky art all over the place.
That place is so surreal. Hands down my favorite experience
Honorable mention for the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
I loved that, did you look up the chimney?
No idea. Last time I was there was about 20 years ago. Would love to take my children.
I haven’t been to many museums, but the Corning museum of glass was interesting.
