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.
Air and Space in DC. You can touch a fucking piece of the moon!
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 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😅
I haven’t been to many museums, but the Corning museum of glass was interesting.
Goes without saying if you are in D.c. all the Smithsonians. But I also recomed the Spy museum. Very unique and new building is very cool.
I agree. Smithsonian is tops for me so far. Was so thrilled to see the Coelacanth and Ankylosaur!
I just got back from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, and that was almost as good, just a bit smaller. Got to touch a moon fragment, a Mars fragment, and a metallic meteor. Very nice, but much smaller, mineral room. Lots of great dinosaurs and especially pterosaurs. And as the main contributor on [email protected], they had over 20 owl specimens. Great place.
Spy Museum was a blast and worth paying for in a city of mostly free to notch museums. Way more content than I expected, and very interactive.
I second the Spy Museum as well as the Smithsonians.
The Newseum was also a great museum but it has been closed.
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.
I really enjoyed the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
In the world? There are a ton of really good museums in the world. But it hasn’t been mentioned yet so I am going to say the British Museum.
The Wydah Pirate Museum in Cape Cod MA - it’s a smaller museum but it’s packed full of artifacts recovered from the wreck of an actual golden age of piracy ship (the Wydah, Black Sam Belamy’s ship which wrecked in Cape Cod). They have multiple weapons, cannons, and the only confirmed pirate treasure ever recovered. All the artifacts were just super cool, very few recreations of things almost everything is really from the actual wreck. The excavation of the wreck site is ongoing too, the last room in the museum is dedicated to showing how they recover items that have been encased in “concretions” and has lots of items actively being recovered so you can see the process happening.
Idk, I’m a golden age of piracy nerd for sure so this was super cool to me.
Oh that’s so cool!
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.
A tiny museum within sight of Prague Castle. Another tiny museum SOMA San Francisco. Both had amazing art/artists, were completely empty of people, and I have no clue where they are now or what artists I saw.
Vasa Museum in Stockholm
Aside from all the world famous obvious answers the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto CA was unexpectedly good. Saw a boot from a space suit, Shaq’s giant sneaker, a golden sandals that belonged to a king and lots of other cool stuff.
