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.