What do you think is the museum that pleasantly surprised you the most?

We've been to many museums that weren't on the top ten lists, and have always been pleasantly surprised. In fact we make a point of trying to find them, no matter what city or country we're in. They're not as busy as the more popular ones, and I often find I learn more in them -- not sure why, but it's true.
If you wish to know more about WW1 and it's affect on the economic and social fabric of the Somme, I would recommend going to The Great War Museum in Perrone (south of Arras). It was full of young French students when we were there, learning about the Great War. The South Downs in England have a number of outdoor "living" museums that capture what life was like in the Bronze Age. I don't remember the name of the one we stumbled upon, but we spent all morning wandering around the site and talking to some of the researchers that were there. They was a class of young students learning how to wattle the walls with mud, spin yarn, start fires, and build the straw roofs. Lots of fun.

Jardin des Plantes in Dijon - It was raining I was on the GR and looking for someplace to get warm and eat lunch, beautiful peaceful gardens, some zen rock gardens, and a natural history museums that reminded me of the ones on the East Coast-in some old house with stuff in jars, and old fashioned butterfly displays, and stuffed animals, and old journals, it was fascinating maybe because it was so small and dusty. The highlight of the trip was sitting in the tiny theatre (10 seats?) watching the film MicroCosmos. My point - There is more than art in museums, and sometimes what locals provide for their on denziens is equally valuable to tourists.

Not really a museum ,, but I loved the "Portrait Gallery" in London.

Musee Conde which is inside the Chateau Chantilly, incredible collection of paintings, only second to the Lourve. and best of all NO CROWDS

The Bronte parsonage in Howarth Yorkshire.

Probably the best ( and most reasonably priced ) literary history museum in the UK.

But even that is totally overshadowed in every respect by Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam - the only museum that I consider should be mandatory for any traveller who passes within 100 Km of Amsterdam.

Museum of Science and Industry and the several museums in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. Also the "Iceman" museum in Bolzano, Italy

I am sure it is in the guidebooks but for me it was the Museum of London near the Barbican.

Everyone goes to the British Museum which is of course wonderful but this one is certainly worth a number of hours.

We really enjoyed the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. It was a trip down memory lane and free. They sell some really nice post cards there that are suitable for framing.

The best surprise was a former Danish King's summer palace in Schlesswig, Germany (about 30km from the Danish Border). The building was beautiful, it was packed with centuries of artifacts, and it was interesting to learn how a palace can be turned into a castle when you learn an enemy is going to attack (back then no one did surprise attacks).

I've been to many great museums but this one was an unexpected gem.

The Mauritshuis Royal Cabinet of Paintings in The Hague. It's rather small but makes up for it with the 'Quality' of Dutch paintings there. I enjoyed it more than the Rijksmuseum.

Jarrod,
I appreciate your positive question.

For me, I love sculptures so when I visited the Borghese Galleria in Rome last month, I knew I would be happy but it totally blew me away. To me, far more breath taking than "David" in Florence - and that moved me. Room after room was such a treat - I had the largest smile all day.

Benaki Museum (ancient Greek archaeology) in Athens Greece. The large painted pottery there is beautiful and it looks new. The Archaeological museum located at Rhodes old town on the island Rhodes of Greece. It has many exquisite little ancient items made of various materials. Explanations of the items are printed in English. Hallwylska Museet (mansion) in Stockholm Sweden. It has several collections of items, including silver, porcelain,jewelry, and the greatest swords that I ever saw. In a mansion in downtown Stockholm. Original furniture, and a unique very old Steinway grand piano. I liked this place more than the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. The Hallwylska Museet is not mentioned in the book "Rick Steves' SCANDINAVIA". Castle Museum at York in England.

In 1985 I was a poor college student backpacking and taking trains through Britain and Europe. I stopped outside of Manchester for a couple of days to visit friends, and borrow a couch. They had to go to work and pointed me in the direction of the Style Mill. This didn't appear in any of the guidebooks, infact the area in general was given a don't bother by the authors of several. What a great day it turned out to be. I took a bus to the town, then walked to the museum. This is an old textile mill from the industrial revolution. It was not only full of mechanical displays of the weaving process, but also a terrific social history of the workers lives. Better still, it told the story of cotton, the American South, and the economics of trade at that time. It was the best history lesson about the impact of cotton and textiles I had ever seen.

Style Mill gets my nod as a pleasant surprise.

The rail and transport museum near Belfast, No. Ireland. I have no idea why I went there because the subject didn't interest me - or so I thought. It was a fascinating and well-organized museum of the history of transportation with tons of exhibits.

In Amsterdam, the hidden Catholic church in what is now the red light district. Much more than I expected.

I had been to Paris many times before visiting the Jacquemart Andre home/museum. It was a wonderful surprise--very interesting. The restaurant (more of a tea room imo) was very good and full of locals.

I loved the Palace of Miracles (sometimes called the Palace of Wonders) in Budapest. I took my students there on a field trip (I'm science teacher) and we all had a blast. The museum is all hands-on and has information for almost all stations in English and Hungarian. GREAT stop for kids just to have fun during a European vacation.

Imperial War Museum in London. It was a fascinating place, with lots of great interactive stuff. Would definitely recommend it, even if the "war" part sounds daunting.

Not a museum, but the best backstage tour in Vienna is the Lippizaner stable tour at Hofburg. You have to like horses, but they keep 70 stallions together in one very small place, plus you get to check out all the tack, the training regimin and the inner workings of the 400 year traditions of the Spanish Riding School.

The Postal Museum in Frankfurt, the Criminal Justice Museum in Rothenburg and in Siena the Santa Maria Della Scala-a hospital from the middle ages.

Okay, this is breaking your rule of "not in a guidebook", but I think the Rodin Museum in Paris is great. For one thing, it is in a house (a nice house, admittedly) in a quiet setting rather than a commercial structure on a major street. The grounds are beautiful, but not in a fussy sort of way. The art is great and very approachable. The times I have been there it has not been crowded, but I tend to travel in shoulder season.

I just read someone mention the Imperial War Museum. My husband went there on our first trip to London together and kept telling me I had to go. I told him I was not interested in war stuff. Our last trip to London he talked me into going and I was pleasantly suprised at how I was glad I went with him. I understand that the museum was made in the building that was orginally an insane asylum. That seems VERY appropriate for a war museum. In the about 20 minutes time we experience WW 1 and WW 2. It brought home how tragic both were. They were the same war, just with more modern equipment. He also got me to visit Churchill's Cabinet War Museum and other sites associated with Winston Churchill. Churchill was a fascinating man with all he accomplished in his life. I have since read parts of Manchester biography on Churchill and even our dog is named Winston.

I will go with the Imperial War Museum in London, the City Museum (that may not be the correct name) in York and also the train museum in York

I don't know if these are in Rick's guide or not, but I really enjoyed both of them.

The Musée national du Moyen Age because you get to see pieces of stained glass and stonework from Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle at eye level. I also loved the illuminated manuscripts (but I have always enjoyed them).

The Musée de la Musique - La Villette because it has great temporary exhibitions (the first time I went it was Pink Floyd's The Wall), if you are lucky someone will be performing on a traditional instrument from some exotic place (got to see a Senegalese musician there) and as a musician, I just like seeing the evolution of my instruments (piano and oboe).

Also, the Wagner Festspielhaus in Bayreuth is really fascinating for the way it was built specifically for opera and to showcase the voice.

The Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin--this is to Berlin as the Anne Frank house is to Amsterdam.

The British Library in London--a friend insisted I go there and she was right--the "treasures gallery" has the most amazing collection of literary/print treasures in one room, ranging from handwritten music by Mozart and Beatles' lyrics, to Jane Austen's writing desk, a draft of Jane Eyre, one of Da Vinci's notebooks, the Magna Carta, original stamps from the "Stamp Act" which sparked the American Revolution, and the list goes on and on... the only difficult thing was that I was there by myself and didn't have anyone to share the wonder of it all with!

We were staying at Heaton's in Dingle, Ireland. The owner posted notice of a local concert for that evening. It was held in a small church that was otherwise unused. There was no charge to attend but, if you wanted, you could make a donation. We decided to check it out. The musicians were excellent. They were very young and very talented. They played instruments that, for the most part, we had never seen before. We had a wonderful evening and we'll remember it always.

The museum of the History of the City of Paris, which is in the Marais, has always been empty whenever I'm in there but I can't understand why. It's a great place, much more worth it than the better known museum nearby, the Picasso museum.

I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the tiny climbing museum in Zermatt, in the shadow of the "real" Matterhorn. It has things such as the rope, leather shoes, journals and wool jackets used by the original summiters, so different from the hi-tech apparatus used by mountaineers today. This, coupled with the small climbers' cemetery in the center of town, was a reminder of the draw of climbing these beautiful and dangerous peaks. In fact, 2 people fell to their death during the couple of days that I was there, adding even more poignancy to my memory of the visit there.

i'm not a huge museum person but I really enjoyed the Danish Resistance Museum in Copenhagen. First off, it's free, which in Copenhagen is a big deal LOL. And I just found it very well-done and interesting. I had no idea all the things that this little country did in secret during the war to help.

And not so much a museum, but I immensely enjoyed the Botanical Garden in Amsterdam, had a lovely inexpensive lunch at their little cafe eating amongst the exotic plants, and it was a nice oasis from what I found to be a pretty hectic city. Really enjoyed it.

I like to mix in a bit of the offbeat and strange along with the must-see museums (and generally have a better time for far cheaper at the offbeat/strange sites not usually listed in mainstream guidebooks).

My favorites are the Capuchin Crypt underneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Rome, Italy) - not as large, but way better than the Paris Catacombs, The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons (London, England), the mummified/bog people under St. Michan's Church (Dublin, Ireland) and Pere Lachaise Cemetary (Paris, France) which has lots more to it than just seeing where Jim Morrison was buried.

If you are travelling with older children or teens, these sites are often a welcome change of pace for them when they tire of being dragged through room after room of Renaissance art. And every site is free or costs very little to see.

Inside the Tower of London is a samll military museum. You have to "do" the Tower first. We saw this small building as we wandered around. It cost (20 years ago) about 50pence to go in. It turned out to be the Museum for the regement that we Americans call the Red Coats!!! It is very well done and very intersting. The other is the Holocost museum in Denmark. Very moving!

Hi,
While I;m not really a "museum" type person, I really liked the Swiss Transportation Museum and if you're ever in the Sud Tirol, the Museum of Archaeology in Bozen/Bolzano (in particular the "Ice Man" exhibit) was very interesting and the Diocesan Museum in Brixen/Bressanone was excellent.

Paul