One of the best things about travelling is visiting amazing museums. Pretty much every town and city on the planet has its own, but not all of them are created equal. Some, like Paris’s Louvre, make your jaw drop as soon as you walk through the doors. Others, such as Rio’s startling Museo do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow), use architecture to promote sustainability. And then there are those like the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which is an utterly heartbreaking way to pay your respects to the victims of the Nazi genocide.
Museums are places where collections of artifacts and cultural objects are stored for public display. They may also offer educational programs and interactive demonstrations. Most museums focus on specific subjects, such as art, science, natural history, and local history. Museums are often considered to be tourist attractions and many attract visitors from outside the host country, with the top museums in the world attracting millions of people each year.
The museum concept is rooted in the human instinct to acquire and collect objects of significance, along with the desire to share them. Evidence of this can be found as early as Paleolithic burials and in the earliest forms of rock art, and later in the form of ethnographic collections displayed in so-called wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosities. The idea of the museum as a place to house these collections for public study and enjoyment has been around since antiquity, with the mouseion (a kind of ancient Greek temple or school) being perhaps the first institution of this type.
While the word museum has become synonymous with a building in which objects are stored, it originally meant something more like a “place connected with the Muses” or a library. The concept grew further in scope with the development of botanical museums, where collections of plant specimens were studied and recorded. The concept of the museum as a place to collect, study, and exhibit these types of artifacts — along with providing education about them — has been growing ever since.
Some museums are built for economic development and revitalization, with examples such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. These institutions bring in large numbers of tourists and have a positive impact on the local economy.
Museums can be found all over the world and include everything from historical sites to contemporary art and architecture. The Smithsonian, for example, has a massive collection of historic items from every corner of the globe, as well as some of the most important modern art in the world, from Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The Louvre’s masterpieces are awe-inspiring, as are the treasures in Rome’s Sistine Chapel and the gleaming gold of Colombia’s legendary Lost City of El Dorado, which lured European explorers to South America but has never been found. And then there is the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, a heartbreaking experience that culminates with your reflections in the Memorial Room as you stand in front of an eternal flame.
