My Favorite Unusual or Unique Museums around the World

I am by no means a museum expert. And while I do enjoy the occasional museum, I tend to find them to be daunting tourist attractions that I feel obligated to visit because of their cultural and/or historical importance. I especially dislike art museums - I recognize they are important cultural institutions, but I personally just find most art museums to be tiring and boring. The more I travel, the more I've begun to bypass these places while traveling, no matter how important or famous they may be.

However, there are some museums that I have visited in my travels that are FANTASTIC and should not be missed by any tourist. Of course this list is very limited, but I think it does offer variety and uniqueness.

1. Miniatur Wunderland - Hamburg, Germany

This museum may be best for children. Or nerdy adult train obsessives. I am the latter. I love trains. Train rides, historic trains, miniature train models. You name it. So this museum was incredibly fun for me (and Emilio liked it a lot too). Basically it's full of room after room of extremely elaborate dioramas of all different types - models of real cities, mountain scenes, and probably the most awesome one, a model of Hamburg's airport, complete with model planes taking off and landing (no, planes are not trains...but this was fabulous nonetheless). So. Awesome.

2. Haus der Musik - Vienna, Austria

I've been to this museum twice now because even though I really dislike Vienna (sorry, Vienna), I adore this interactive museum. It's a pretty massive building with several floors, each with a different theme, including one dedicated to the famous Vienna Philharmonic (with a video of the latest New Year's concert), one explaining the science behind tone and sound, and one dedicated to Austrian composers. The best exhibits are the most interactive ones - you can roll dice to compose your own waltz and you can conduct your own orchestra!

3. Teatro-Museo Dalí - Figueres, Spain

I've mentioned many times that I'm not a huge fan of art, but I do love Dalí. The Costa Brava, up in the northeast corner of Spain, is a great place to discover more about Dalí's life and inspiration. This museum is fascinating. I especially liked how it's not a lot of paintings, but rather sculptures, statues and objects. The building itself is pretty wacky with statues and giant eggs all around the roof. He was one crazy dude, that's for sure.


4. Tinguely Museum - Basel, Switzerland

One of the bigger exhibits - EVERYTHING moves!

This is another museum that I've been to twice because the second time I was in Basel with Emilio I had to take him. Jean Tinguely was Swiss artist who is best known for "metamechanics," or basically sculpture machines. The museum tells you about Tinguely himself, but the best part are the original sculptures, which when you press a button, literally come to life. They start moving, making noise, playing music, creating things, you name it. So, so worth a visit if you're in the area (or even if you're not - Basel is a beautiful city!).

5. Museo Art Nouveau y Art Déco Casa Lis - Salamanca, Spain

I never realized that I actually like Art Nouveau until I discovered this museum in a beautiful building perched on the hill of old town Salamanca several years ago. The building has lots of colorful stained glass and is full of Art Nouveau/Art Deco style figurines, jewelry, statues, and other objects. It's not too big so it's not overwhelming, which I always appreciate in a museum.


6. House of Terror, Budapest

This museum is a very interesting an relatively interactive museum about communism and fascism in 20th century Hungary. It's also intended to be a memorial to victims of these time periods. Hungary, like many other countries in central and eastern Europe, was severely affected by Nazi and Soviet influence, and the Hungarian communist regime lasted decades. The House of Terror, located in what was the headquarters of the Hungarian communist party, exhibits all of this in an interesting way. I really learned a lot but wasn't at all bored here. I think it's also important to have a general understanding of modern Hungar
ian history if you happen to already be visiting.

7. Sorolla Museum - Madrid, Spain

Yup, this is an art museum. But as the museum is located in Joaquín Sorolla's own beautiful mansion of a house, the building itself is an important part of the museum. This is a great place to see a bit of Spanish art without getting overwhelmed. While the Prado, Reina Sofía, and Thyssen museums are very very good, they are huge and at least I get overwhelmed visiting them. But the Sorolla Museum is small, the house is lovely, and the gardens, designed to imitate Andalusian mudéjar art and it makes you feel like you're in a mini-Alhambra or Alcázar garden.

8. Hotel Viru KGB Museum - Tallinn, Estonia

The last museum is, yes, part of a hotel. I absolutely love Tallinn - it's such an underrated and stunningly beautiful city. This is another museum that I've visited twice because I brought Emilio there the second time. Basically, Estonia was one of the Soviet states until the collapse of the USSR. The Viru Hotel opened in 1972 and the last floor was a particularly important KGB radio center. As the hotel at the time was designed for important, rich foreigners, the KGB operated here by bugging rooms to spy, as the KGB was meant to do. A few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the KGB long gone, the secret rooms and devices - literally just dropped and left behind - were discovered and converted into a museum. It's also a reminder that Russia remains a mere 150 miles (or less) away.

Of course there are other unusual or unique museums that I've enjoyed in Spain and around the world, but these are some of my favorites and I would definitely recommend them.

#22 See the Sunset from the Templo de Debod

While the Templo de Debod has always been infamous for the botellón (drinking in the street) that is always going on there, it's also famous for the beautiful sunsets that you can witness there.

This more than 2000-year-old temple was donated to Spain from Egypt in the 1960s. It's really quite impressive, inside and out. During the day you can visit the inside of the Egyptian temple, and though it's quite a small and tight space inside, you can see lots of hieroglyphs, images, and statues. Since entrance is free, it's worth a quick look inside! And, of course, don't forget to go back at sunset on a clear day.

Valle del Jerte - Cherry Blossoms Galore

One thing I love about Spain is its various blossoming fruit trees. The most common are the almond trees whose flowers bloom in February and can be white or really pretty pink colors, and the cherry trees that bloom sometime in March or April, depending on the weather and region.

Now, of course Spain isn't the only place with lots of cherry trees that blossom in the spring, but I still think that Valle del Jerte is a special, special place. For about ten days in the spring each year, kilometers and kilometers of land covered with cherry trees turn white as the flowers bloom. Cherry blossom festivals started in the region 70 years ago and as a result, it's a historic heritage site of Spain. The blossoms alone (because there is literally nothing else in this relatively remote area of the country) bring plenty of tourists during these lone ten or so days each year - and for good reason; it's stunning!

#67 See Goya’s frescoes in the San Antonio de la Florida Chapel

Frescos of the chapel.

I truly know next to nothing about art. I can name you some famous artists (mostly painters) and I can give you a short list of important Spanish artists, but that's really it. Honestly, I'm just not much of a fan of art. Especially portraits and religious paintings. I really find nothing more boring than walking through the Prado passing portrait after portrait of whatever king or queen or duke or whatever of Spain; then painting after painting of Jesus, Mary, or any of the other gazillion saints.

However, there is some art that I do like, and even the art that I don't like I can at least recognize its significance. (Except abstract expressionism - I'm sorry but I simply do not understand this type of painting - I don't care how much  you tell me about dripping paint, or layers of paint, or brushstrokes, or the special meaning behind the color red, it's not art!) Francisco de Goya is one of such painters - the boring portrait type that I dislike but recognize his importance, that is. He often painted people (though certainly not exclusively), including the Spanish royal family, for whom he worked. He died in Bordeaux, France in 1828, but nearly a century later in 1919 his remains were transferred to Madrid and reburied in the Ermita de San Antonio de Florida.

Frescos on the domes.

The chapel was originally built for the saint after whom it is named. What I do like about Goya are the Neoclassical frescoes that he himself painted in just six months on the chapel's ceilings. They mainly (in a nutshell) depict scenes from Saint Anthony's life, as well as images from 18th century Madrid. I personally don't understand the technique or significance behind the frescoes, but they are quite beautiful. Plus, I think there's extra merit to painting a fresco - it can't be an easy or pleasant task to paint a gigantic image standing on a ladder of some sort, craning your neck, half upside-down in order to get that stuff on the ceiling.