With the announcement of yet another Disney price hike, now is the time to plan a family trip to one of the world’s more off-the-beaten-path magic kingdoms. A pocket-sized collection of “dressed fleas” from a British natural history museum, or an Italian “park of monsters” filled with gigantic mythological beasts, provide free rein for the imaginations of children and adults alike. So, go ahead and leave your smartphones and tablets in the car.
The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature – Paris, France
The Museum of Hunting and Nature, a quiet menagerie of taxidermied animals in Paris, stands out from the kiddie-entertainment herd. Founded in 1967, the three-story museum is a love letter to humanity's relationship with animals, albeit stuffed ones. Everywhere you turn, there are murals depicting interspecies friendship and mounted polar bears, horned rams, peacocks and white tigers displayed in painstaking recreations of their native habitats. Taking in the preserved animal kingdom as a whole, the effect is like an upscale Parisian boutique’s version of a natural history museum meets a wildlife speakeasy. “Teeth! Fangs! Claws!,” an exhibition of ceramic mythical creatures such as fauns and unicorns, is on display through March 2023.
Mütter Museum – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The oldest independent medical library in the United States, the Mütter Museum is a showcase for everything miraculous, terrifying and downright weird about the human body. In addition to detailed anatomical models, from individual organs to entire cadavers, the museum is home to a catalog of iron lungs and other bewildering medical instruments of yore. A library of human skulls inscribed with patient information and wet specimens, human body parts that have been preserved in fluid, serve plenty of timely Halloween spookiness, too. In today’s era of video-game gore and true-crime fiction, Mütter proves that science and medicine appeal to the young at heart, if not necessarily the faint of heart.
The Powerhouse Collection at Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences – Sydney, Australia
Kids these days tend to believe that the pre-internet world was essentially a primordial one. The Museum of Applied Arts and Science’s “Powerhouse” collection, then, is an all-too-relevant reminder of contemporary tech-culture’s origins long before 24/7 content farms like TikTok and Twitch. The museum’s curated mix of industrial antiquities and circuit-board curios span decades, from a 1905 Cadillac Model F to pre-Mario-Brothers gaming systems, such as a clunky Magnavox Odyssey console from the 1960s and a “Space Invaders” arcade cabinet. Batteries not included.
Park of the Monsters (Sacro Busco) – Umbria, Italy
If your children’s fascination with beastly ghouls extends beyond just the month of October, Park of Monsters, a sprawling outdoor sculpture garden located just north of Rome, offers year-round creature comforts. Walking along the Italian castle’s forest trails, expect encounters with a giant stone-carved war elephant or menacing, roaring lions that look as though they are about to pounce out from the surrounding woods. A large, primate-like face, carved into a hillside, allows guests to stroll inside its stretched-open mouth and sit at a picnic table perched on top of a large stone tongue.
Schmetterlinghaus Imperial Butterfly House – Vienna, Austria
The Imperial Butterfly House in central Vienna combines the dramatic architecture of a 19th-century European palace with the child-like wonder of nature’s most photogenic insect. Hundreds of free-flying tropical butterflies soar through this Viennese urban atrium, fluttering throughout a humid habitat of tropical plants, towering canopy of trees and cascading waterfalls. The Atlas butterfly, one such example, dons a stunning orange and white pattern along its 11-inch wingspan. Bonus: The “pupa box,” a hands-on look at larvae on the verge of adulthood metamorphosis, should feel familiar to the growing pains of nearby inquisitive young visitors.
The Inhotim Institute – Brumadinho, Brazil
The Inhotim Institute is one of the world’s largest open-air, contemporary-art playpens. A sprawling labyrinth of Atlantic-Forest botanical gardens, fields covered in mirrored orbs by Yayoi Kusama, and art houses illuminated by light sculptures by the Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, the park feels like a mammoth playground tailor made for the artistic imagination of children — assuming they have the stamina to roam the property’s over 500,000 acres.
The Natural History Museum – Tring, England
The Natural History Museum in Tring, England has over 4,900 fascinating specimens on display. The star attractions, however, are the dapper band of “dressed fleas,” tiny blood-sucking insects decked out in tuxedos, wedding gowns, top hats and all manner of throwback fashion. The ragtag, taxidermied fleas were originally purchased from Mexico in 1905, where they were sold as collectible souvenirs. There are other, more commanding animal draws, too, such as a stunning taxidermy Siberian polar bear, rare zebra species and a domesticated mandrill baboon, George, who lived at the London Zoo in the early 1900s and had a cult celebrity following. But did we mention there are dressed fleas?
