This mid-sized gallery offers a great overview of regional art. The collection spans from the 15th to the 20th centuries and focuses on local superstars such as Bruegel, van der Weyden, Jordaens, Rubens. The modern collection is impressive, with 19th and 20th century work by Belgian artists mixed in with pieces by Seurat, Dali and […]
Archive | Museums RSS feed for this section
Brussels City Museum
Don’t know much about Brussels? Stop by this small museum for a crash history course. The first floor displays wall tapestries, goldsmith work, ceramics, paintings and altars. On the second floor, view old maps, architectural relics, more paintings and my personal favorites, the miniature scale city models. The third floor has historical documents, manuscripts and, […]
Römisch-Germanisches Museum der Stadt Köln
Usually archeological finds bore me after about ten minutes, but this museum has just the right amount of items to ooh and ahh at to keep things interesting. The 200 A.D. Dionysos Mosaic is the main draw. A million pieces of limestone, ceramics and glass covering 70 square meters originally adorned the banqueting hall of […]
Schokoladenmuseum Köln
The Imhoff-Stollwerck-Museum is the place to go if you love chocolate. Not only can you see how chocolate is made, you can’t take a step without a kind, kind employee sticking a sample in your face. The ground-floor exhibition, including a tiny rain forest-like garden, teaches viewers the history of chocolate through the past 3,000 […]
Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig satisfactorily provides all the modern art –isms under one roof: realism, surrealism, nouveau réalisme, abstract expressionism. The Ludwig has the third largest Picasso collection in the world, after Paris and Barcelona, and an impressive collection of American artists. You’ll see some of the more famous Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns pieces […]
Kunsthaus Art Gallery
I don’t know if the Kunsthaus places so many sculptures outside its museum because it knows charging 30 CHF (much more than vastly superior museums like the Met, Louvre, National Gallery, etc.) is ridiculous or if they genuinely want to provide accessible art. Regardless, I grudgingly loved this Rodin. Inside, the permanent collection includes Alberto […]
Museum Strauhof
This small museum is housed in an 18th century residence and has four literary exhibitions every year. The current exhibit is – no surprise – “The Mysteries of Charles Dickens.” Of course, I had to see it. The exhibit is by far the weakest among the recent ones I’ve seen, but it contains a lot […]
Charles Dickens Museum
The Charles Dickens Museum is always a must-see for me. This four-story house is his only remaining London residence. Here, he wrote The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. The museum opened in 1925 and packed ten rooms with 100,000 memorabilia items including manuscripts, photos (Dickens was prolific in every part of his life, […]
Museum of London
If you’re interested in London’s history, go right to the source. At the Museum of London, you can witness the city’s development from, oh, 450 million years ago to the present. You can take in the Roman era, then Saxon, medieval and Tudor periods. I particularly like the extensive Great Fire display and the 1960’s […]
The National Gallery
The name says it all. This is one of the largest, most comprehensive collections of European paintings in the world. All major traditions are represented. The color-coded layout is as good as a GPS as you wind your way through the crowded galleries to view works by artists such as Van Eyck, Holbein, Titian, Botticelli, […]
