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Western Europe has kept millennia worth of artistic masterpieces close to home in strongholds like the Louvre, the Prado, and the Vatican Museums. European museums do not merely house art, however. They also have exhibits on erotica, clocks, corpses, sea otters, leprosy, marijuana, chocolate, puppets and secret police—in short, whatever can be captioned. A trip across Europe qualifies as little more than a stopover without an afternoon among some of its paintings, sculptures, and artifacts—whether they include the pinnacles of Western culture, or more risqué fare. Whether your museum tastes lie in the classy or the sassy, Europe has a collection for you.
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AUSTRIA: ÖSTERREICHISCHE GALERIE . Venetian paintings, an Egyptian burial chamber, and medieval arms in the world’s 4th-largest art collection impress the history nerd in all of us. |
BELGIUM: MUSEUM OF COCOA AND CHOCOLATE . Chocolate lovers will delight in the sight, smell, and taste of this unique museum in Brussels, which displays the history of the cacao fruit. |
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BRITAIN: THE BRITISH MUSEUM . Holding world artifacts like Egypt’s Rosetta Stone or Iran’s Oxus Treasure, the British Museum contains almost nothing British at all. |
DENMARK: LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART . This well-rounded museum’s name honors the three wives of the estate’s original owner—all of them were named Louisa. |
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BRITAIN: TATE MODERN . Organized thematically, this former power station turned modern art powerhouse is as much a masterpiece as any of the works in its galleries. |
FRANCE: MUSÉE DU TEMPS . This whirring and ticking museum exhibits clocks from Galileo’s time to the present day, along with offbeat games and hands-on experiments. |
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FRANCE: THE LOUVRE . Six million visitors come each year to see 35,000 works of art, including Da Vinci’s surprisingly small painting of art’s most famous face, the Mona Lisa. |
GERMANY: SCHOKOLADENMUSEUM . This chocolate museum, detailing the chocolate-making process, has gold fountains that spurt out samples that make this a magical experience. |
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GERMANY: GEMÄLDEGALERIE . With over 1000 works from 1200 to 1800 by the likes of Bruegel and Raphael, it’s no wonder this is one of the most visited museums in Germany. |
ITALY: PALERMO CATACOMBS . The withered faces and mostly empty eye sockets of 8000 posing corpses gaze enviously at living spectators in Europe’s creepiest underground tomb. |
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GREECE: NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM . Athens itself may be museum enough for some, but this building collects what’s too small to be seen with a placard on the street. |
THE NETHERLANDS: CANNABIS COLLEGE . Cannabis College is just like college, except there are no libraries, no lectures, no studying, no liquor, no dorms, and no full-time students. |
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ITALY: GALLERIA BORGHESE . Vivid paintings and graceful sculpture by Bernini, Caravaggio, Rubens, and Titian are a sight for sore eyes after staring at miles of Renaissance canvases. |
NORWAY: VIGELANDPARKEN . Not quite a museum, but with enough art to be one, this park contains over 200 of Gustav Vigeland’s controversial sculptures. Each depicts a stage of human life. |
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ITALY: VATICAN MUSEUMS . Look for the School of Athens here; the painting tops off a mindblowing amount of Renaissance and other art, including the incredible Raphael Rooms. |
PORTUGAL: OCEANÁRIO . Europe’s largest oceaniarium, with interactive exhibits exploring the four major oceans, allows visitors to get within a meter of sea otters and penguins. |
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THE NETHERLANDS: RIJKSMUSEUM . Renovations shouldn’t deter visitors who come to see the pinnacles of the Dutch Golden Age, including Rembrandts and Vermeers, that line the walls. |
SPAIN: TEATRE-MUSEU DALÍ . Dalí’s final resting place has works like Napoleon’s Nose Transformed into a Pregnant Woman Strolling Her Shadow with Melancholic amongst Original Ruins. |
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SPAIN: MUSEO DEL PRADO . It’s an art-lover’s heaven to see hell, as painted by Hieronymus Bosch. Velázquez’s famous 10 by 9 ft. painting Las Meninas is as luminous as it is tall. |
SWITZERLAND: VERKEHRSHAUS DER SCHWEIZ . The Swiss Transport Museum, with an IMAX theater and a wide array of cool contraptions, isn’t nearly as dorky as its name implies. |
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