Museum sights in Europe
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House of Bols
The House of Bols is a jenever (Dutch gin) museum run by the Bols distillery. The hour-long, self-guided tour includes a confusing sniff test, a company history and a cocktail made by one of the bartenders who train at the academy upstairs. You must be aged 18 or over to visit.
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House of Terror
This startling museum is housed in what was once the headquarters of the dreaded ÁVH secret police. The building has a ghastly history, for it was here that many activists of every political persuasion that was out of fashion before and after WWII were taken for interrogation and torture. The walls were apparently double thickness to mute the screams. A plaque on the outside of this house of shame reads in part: ‘We cannot forget the horror of terror, and the victims will always be remembered’.
The museum focuses on the crimes and atrocities committed by both Hungary’s fascist and Stalinist regimes in a permanent exhibition called Double Occupation. But the years aft…
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Vatican Museums
Visiting the Vatican Museums is an unforgettable experience that requires strength, stamina and patience. You’ll need to be on top of your game to endure the inevitable queues – if not for a ticket then for the security checks – and enjoy what is undoubtedly one of the world’s great museum complexes.
Founded by Pope Julius II in the early 16th century and enlarged by successive pontiffs, the museums are housed in what is known collectively as the Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano. This massive 5.5-hectare complex consists of two palaces – the Vatican palace nearest St Peter’s and the Belvedere Palace – joined by two long galleries. On the inside are three courtyards: th…
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Natural History Museum
This mammoth institution is dedicated to the Victorian pursuit of collecting and cataloguing. Walking into the Life galleries (Blue Zone) in the 1880 Gothic Revival building off Cromwell Rd evokes the musty moth-eaten era of the Victorian gentleman scientist. The main museum building, with its blue and sand-coloured brick and terracotta, was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and is as impressive as the towering diplodocus dinosaur skeleton in the Central Hall just ahead of the main entrance. It’s hard to match any of the exhibits with this initial sight, except perhaps the huge blue whale just beyond it. Children, who are the main fans of this museum, are primed for more pr…
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Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is one of Amsterdam’s must-sees. Opened in 1973 to house the collection of Vincent’s younger brother Theo, it consists of about 200 paintings and 500 drawings by Vincent and his friends and contemporaries, such as Gauguin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bernard. Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and had a short but astonishingly productive life. Through his paintings, the museum chronicles his journey from Holland, where his work was dark and sombre, to Paris, where, under the influence of the impressionists, he discovered vivid colour. From there he moved to Arles, where he was incredibly productive, often completing a canvas every day. Astoundingly Van …
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Ddr Museum
Below the hotel, the DDR Museum teaches the rest of us about daily life behind the Iron Curtain. You'll learn that East German kids were put through collective potty training, engineers earned little more than farmers and everyone, it seems, went on nudist holidays. A must for Good Bye, Lenin! fans. The entrance is on the Spree bank, opposite the Berliner Dom.
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Mucha Museum
This fascinating (and busy) museum features the sensuous Art Nouveau posters, paintings and decorative panels of Alfons Mucha (1860–1939), as well as many sketches, photographs and other memorabilia. The exhibits include countless artworks showing Mucha’s trademark Slavic maidens with flowing hair and piercing blue eyes, bearing symbolic garlands and linden boughs; photos of the artist’s Paris studio, one of which shows a trouserless Gaugin playing the harmonium; a powerful canvas entitled Old Woman in Winter; and the original of the 1894 poster of actress Sarah Bernhardt as Giselda, which shot him to international fame. The fascinating 30-minute video documentary a…
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Vasamuseet
The mighty warship Vasa, 69m long, 160ft tall and pride of the Swedish crown, set off on her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. Within minutes, she and her 100-member crew capsized and sank tragicomically to the bottom of Saltsjön. Painstakingly raised in 1961, the ship and its incredible wooden sculptures were re- assembled like a giant 14,000-piece jigsaw and housed in an amazing purpose-built space. Salvaged objects from the ship, including shoes, cannonballs and pillboxes, provide a vivid glimpse into the lives of 17th-century sailors, but none more so than the forensically reconstructed faces of the ill-fated passengers. Guided tours in English run hourly from 9.30am i…
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State Hermitage Museum
There are art galleries, there are museums, there are the great museums of the world and then there is the Hermitage. An unrivalled collection of art treasures housed in the magnificent palace from which the Romanov tsars ruled the Russian Empire, the State Hermitage will inevitably be the focus of any first visit to St Petersburg, and rightly so. At the information kiosk of the State Hermitage Museum you can pick up a free colour map of the museum, available in most European languages. Immediately after ticket inspection you can hire an audio guide (R250) with recorded tours in English, German, French, Italian or Russian. Groups enter from the river side of the Winter Pa…
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Castelo de São Jorge
Towering dramatically above Lisbon, the hilltop fortifications of Castelo de São Jorge sneak into almost every snapshot. These smooth cobbles have seen it all – Visigoths in the 5th century, Moors in the 9th century, Christians in the 12th century, royals from the 14th to 16th centuries, and convicts in every century. Roam its snaking ramparts and pine-shaded courtyards for superlative views over the city’s red rooftops to the river.
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British Museum
The country's largest museum and one of the oldest and finest in the world, this famous museum boasts vast Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, European and Middle Eastern galleries, among many others.
Begun in 1753 with a 'cabinet of curiosities' bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the nation on his death, the collection mushroomed over the ensuing years partly through the plundering of the empire. The grand Enlightenment Gallery was the first section of the redesigned museum to be built (in 1823).
Among the must-sees are the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, discovered in 1799; the controversial Parthenon Sculptures, stripped from the walls of the …
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Armoury
The Armoury dates back to 1511, when it was founded under Vasily III to manufacture and store weapons, imperial arms and regalia for the royal court. Later it also produced jewellery, icon frames and embroidery. During the reign of Peter the Great all craftspeople, goldsmiths and silversmiths were sent to St Petersburg, and the armoury became a mere museum storing the royal treasures. A fire in 1737 destroyed many of the items. In the early 19th century, new premises were built for the collection. Much of it, however, never made it back from Nizhny Novgorod, where it was sent for safekeeping during Napoleon’s invasion in 1812. Another building to house the collection was …
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Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten
The Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten is a monumental neoclassical edifice built at the end of the 19th century. Its stately rooms house an impressive collection of paintings dating from the 14th century to contemporary times and includes works by Flemish masters.
The size of the museum's collection means that paintings are sometimes rotated. To find the highlights you'll need to pick up a museum plan and audio headset (both free) from reception.
The Flemish Primitives are represented by Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, Rogier Van der Weyden and Gerard David. Highlights include Van Eyck's unusual, almost monotone Saint Barbara (1437), Memling's rich Christ among Angels Sing…
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Science Museum
With seven floors of interactive and educational exhibits, the Science Museum covers everything from the Industrial Revolution to the exploration of space. There is something for all ages, from vintage cars, trains and aeroplanes to labour-saving devices for the home, a wind tunnel and flight simulator. Kids love the interactive sections. There's also a 450-seat Imax cinema.
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Sir John Soane's Museum
Not all of this area's inhabitants were poor, as is aptly demonstrated by the remarkable home of celebrated architect and collector extraordinaire Sir John Soane (1753–1837). Now a fascinating museum, the house has been left largely as it was when Sir John was taken out in a box. Among his eclectic acquisitions are an Egyptian sarcophagus, dozens of Greek and Roman antiquities and the original Rake's Progress, William Hogarth's set of caricatures telling the story of a late 18th-century London cad. Soane was clearly a very clever chap – check out the ingenious folding walls in the picture gallery. Tours (£5) are given at 11am on Saturdays.
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Museum Of Science & Industry
The city’s largest museum comprises 2.8 hectares in the heart of 19th-century industrial Manchester. It’s in the landscape of enormous, weather-stained brick buildings and rusting cast-iron relics of canals, viaducts, bridges, warehouses and market buildings that makes up Castlefield, now deemed an ‘urban heritage park’. If there’s anything you want to know about the Industrial (and post-Industrial) Revolution and Manchester’s key role in it, you’ll find the answers among the collection of steam engines and locomotives, factory machinery from the mills, and the excellent exhibition telling the story of Manchester from the sewers up. With more than a dozen permanent exhibi…
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Musée Magritte
A completely anonymous, suburban yellow-brick house: that's the façade of the Musée Magritte, and the façade that René Magritte, Belgium's most famous surrealist artist, showed the outside world. This museum in Jette occupies the house where Magritte and his wife Georgette lived from 1930 to 1954. Its appeal comes from its incredibly ordinary nature. It's odd to think the man responsible for some of the 20th century's most enduring images spent 24 years of his life in this bourgeois backstreet.
The museum opened in 1999 as the private initiative of a friend of the widow Magritte. With scandalously little support from the Belgian state, the curators assembled hundreds …
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Gulag History Museum
In the midst of all the swanky shops on ul Petrovka, an archway leads to a courtyard that is strung with barbed wire and hung with portraits of political prisoners. This is the entrance to a unique museum dedicated to the Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies, better known as the GULAG. Guides dressed like guards describe the vast network of labour camps that once existed in the former Soviet Union and recount the horrors of camp life. Millions of prisoners spent years in these labour camps, made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago. More than 18 million people passed through this system during its peak years, from 1929 to…
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Dudutki Open Air Museum
Near the sleepy, dusty village of Dudutki, is an open-air museum, where 19th-century Belarusian country life comes to life. If you only make one day trip from Minsk let this be the one. Traditional crafts, such as carpentry, pottery, handicraft-making and baking are on display in old-style wood-and-hay houses.
You can wander around the grounds, taking in the fresh air, spying on a working farm as it was a century ago. Nearby is a working windmill which you can climb. You can also go horse riding or just rest on bales of hay.
Best of all though is the meal you can order, prepared on site using traditional recipes and techniques. Homemade cheeses, bread, draniki(potato panc…
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Deutsches Museum
You could spend days exploring the Deutsches Museum, said to be the world's largest science and technology collection. This vast museum occupies its own island southeast of Isartor (Isar Gate) and features just about anything ever invented. Interactive displays (including glass blowing and paper making), model coal and salt mines, and wonderful sections on musical instruments, caves, geodesy, micro-electronics and astronomy are just some of the delights on offer. Demonstrations take place throughout the day; a popular one is in the power hall where a staff member is raised in the insulated Faraday Cage and zapped with a 220,000V bolt of lightning. There is also a fascinat…
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Auschwitz
Established within disused army barracks in 1940, Auschwitz was initially designed to hold Polish prisoners, but was expanded into the largest centre for the extermination of European Jews. Two more camps were subsequently established: Birkenau and Monowitz. In the course of their operation, between one and 1.5 million people were killed.
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the fleeing Nazis, so many of the original buildings remain as a bleak document of the camp's history. A dozen of the 30 surviving prison blocks house sections of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The cinema in the visitors centre shows a short documentary film about the liberation of the camp…
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Regional Museum
The Regional Museum is one of Siberia’s best. Its wonderfully incongruous 1912 building combines art nouveau and Egyptian temple-style features. Arranged around a Cossack explorer’s ship are models, icons, historical room interiors and nature rooms where you can listen to local birdsong and animal cries. The basement hosts a splendid ethnographic section comparing the historical fashion sense of shamans from various tribal groups. The gift shop sells old coins, medals, postcards and excellent maps.
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Salt Mine
Just outside the administrative boundaries of Kraków, some 14km southeast of the city centre, Wieliczka (vyeh- leech -kah) is famous for its ultra-deep Salt Mine, which has been in continuous operation for 700 years and can be visited. It’s an eerie world of pits and chambers, and everything has been carved by hand from salt blocks. The mine was included on Unesco’s World Heritage List in 1978.
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Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum
Located way out on the outskirts of the city, the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum is a Rīga essential. The dozens of farmhouses, churches and windmills on the grounds provide a record of bygone country life. The National Fair of Applied Arts (early June) and several festivals are held here. Take bus No 1 from the corner of Merķeļa iela and Tērbatas iela to the Brīvdabas muzejs stop.
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Hospital in the Rock
Part of the Castle Hill caves network, this newly opened attraction was used extensively during the siege of Budapest during WWII. It contains original medical equipment as well as some 70 wax figures and is visited on a guided half-hour tour. More interesting is the hour-long ‘full tour‘ (3000/1500/7000Ft), which includes a walk through a Cold War–era nuclear bunker.
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