25 of the World's Weirdest Museums

For most people, the word "museum" evokes a very specific association - it is a place where a variety of interesting exhibits are presented: everyday objects, historical documents, technical inventions or works of art. But there are also museums in the world that do not fit into the overall picture. We present a review of the 25 strangest museums from around the world, a visit to which is not included in the plans of a normal person.

The main goal of the Museum of Bad Art, located in the American state of Massachusetts, is to display the works of artists that have not been appreciated in any other museum in the world. Its permanent exhibition includes about 500 works of art, "too bad to be ignored", but due to limited space, only 30-40 pieces can be shown at a time.

Interestingly, despite its strange focus, the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham has become extremely popular, being mentioned in hundreds of publications around the world.

The original museum, which contains a collection of antique dog collars from the 15th to 17th centuries, is located in Leeds Castle in the English county of Kent.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, iron collars with sharp spikes were very popular, protecting dogs' throats in fights with wolves, boars and bears. But a century later, the frightening accessories with spikes gave way to fairly modern leather collars. All this can be seen by looking at one of the collections of the British Museum, which is visited by over half a million visitors every year.

The collection of the museum, located in the north of Merseyside, contains over three hundred different exhibits of gardening devices and machines, from a simple trimmer to modern lawn mowers, the oldest of which are over two hundred years old. Among them, for example, you can find the very first lawn mower, the history of which is no less interesting than the exhibit itself.

The museum also houses the world's first solar-powered lawn-mow robot and mechanized lawn care assistants that were given to Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

The Avanos Hair Museum is an incredibly creepy place, located underneath a Galip pottery shop, filled with hair samples from 16,000 women. The walls, ceiling, and every other surface except the floor are covered with locks of women's hair and slips of paper with the women's addresses on them.

One of the legends says that the museum was created more than 30 years ago, when Galip's mistress had to leave Avanos and wanted to leave something that would remind her of her. Then she came up with the idea of cutting off a lock of hair and giving it to the potter. Since then, almost all the women who visit this place have left him a piece of hair and their address.

The world's first museum dedicated to bread was opened in one of the former barns of the manufacturer Willy Eislen in the German city of Ulm in 1955. The museum collection contains more than 18 thousand exhibits telling the history of grain cultivation, the improvement of the tools of farmers, millers and bakers, as well as the importance and significance of bread in the history of mankind. On two floors of the museum there are two permanent exhibitions: "From Grain to Bread" and "Man and Bread". In addition to the exhibition halls, the structure of the bread museum also includes a special library with 4 thousand books dedicated to the most popular flour product.

A small museum located in the American state of Tennessee has become famous all over the world thanks to a huge exhibition of 22 thousand salt and pepper shakers of various shapes and colors. All of this personally belongs to the American Andrea Ludden, who collected her collection over the course of twenty years. In the museum, you can simply enjoy the unusual exhibition or buy something as a souvenir.

Established by Emperor Peter I, the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg is considered the first museum in Russia. It contains more than a million items that were previously used for scientific purposes and are now used as exhibits. Today, the Kunstkamera is exclusively a museum of human mutations and deformities, where visitors can see with their own eyes the incredible metamorphoses and deviations of human physiology. It is worth noting that in addition to the so-called "freak show", the Kunstkamera is famous for its numerous exhibits and antiques that tell about the historical past of many peoples of the world.

Cryptozoology is the science that studies strange, little-known, or unknown living creatures. The International Museum dedicated to this science is located in the southeastern United States. Within its walls, visitors can meet the virtually living Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, and horned hares that roam the earth or swim underwater to this day. The museum also contains drawings, sculptures, and supposed remains of other bizarre creatures that cryptozoologists believe have inhabited planet Earth since prehistoric times. The Portland museum is incredibly popular with both children who love “monsters” and scientists who are professionally interested.

The Momofuku Ando Instant Noodle Museum is located in the Japanese prefecture of Osaka. The exhibition of such an unusual museum is dedicated to the history of instant noodles, the biography of its creator Momofuku Ando and the Nissin Foods company, which produces noodles all over the world. The exhibition includes a large number of interactive exhibits - for example, museum visitors will be able to cut noodles from dough, create a cup for noodles to their taste, attend a master class on making special dough and even make their own noodles with any ingredients at the museum factory My Cup Noodle Factory. The museum has its own store, kiosks and a small cafe overlooking the winter garden.

The Medical Museum in Bangkok presents the history of modern medicine in Thailand. All exhibits are divided into 6 permanent and one temporary exhibition. The exhibition halls present such thematic sections as anatomy, congenital anomalies, pathologies, forensic medicine, Thai traditional medicine and toxicology. The Museum of Death contains a huge collection of unique medical cases that can impress not only professionals, but also people far from medicine. Pregnant women, children and especially impressionable people are highly undesirable to visit this museum, as many exhibits can truly shock.

The International Clown Hall of Fame, located in Wisconsin, pays tribute to all representatives of this profession adored by children and many adults. The museum's collection includes items of clown life, professional attributes, photo and video materials dedicated to the lives of the great masters of the grotesque and buffoonery.

Most people, especially the fair half of humanity, at least occasionally think about eternal youth and beauty. An unusual museum in Malaysia tells about the numerous methods of becoming more beautiful that people have used and use throughout the history of mankind. It presents mostly sculptures and graphic images of people who have chosen one or another path to achieving eternal beauty - from ritual "accessories" of ancient tribes to a variety of cosmetics.

The highly unusual Salab Toilet Museum in New Delhi was created by Indian doctor Bindestwar Pathak, who has dedicated his entire life to studying waste management and producing alternative fuel from excrement. His museum contains several thousand exhibits – toilets, urinals, toilet paper, etc. The oldest of them dates back to 3000 B.C.

It is worth noting that to enhance the effect, special chemicals are used in some rooms to convey the "natural aroma" of the toilet. In addition to the seemingly entertaining purpose, the museum also pursues an educational one, aimed at comprehensively improving the extremely unfavorable sanitary situation in large Indian cities.

The Parasitology Museum in the Japanese capital was founded by Dr. Svturo Kamegai 60 years ago, shortly after the war, when epidemics and diseases caused harm to the Japanese population comparable to the consequences of military actions. Today, the museum in Meguro is considered the only one in the world dedicated to the creatures living inside a person. The museum collection consists of 45 thousand parasites. Some of them "in all their glory" are shown on displays in a two-story exhibition hall. The main and most terrifying exhibit of the museum is considered to be a 9-meter worm that lived inside a Japanese girl.

The Paris Sewer Museum, located on the Quai d'Orsay near the Pont de l'Alma, traces the history of the city's sewer system from the first Aubriot tunnels of Charles V to the Belgrand sewer system in use today. It is fitting that this museum is located in an underground tunnel, where visitors can descend to learn about the history of the city's sewers and the development of the sewer network, and also walk through both the wide main tunnels and the narrow secondary ones.

At the Ventriloquist Museum in Kentucky, dummies tell funny stories, roll their eyes at your comments, and have their own opinions on everything. What makes the Fort Mitchell museum unique is that it is the only one of its kind in the world. It seems like there are endless rows of wooden puppets lined up within its walls. They follow every movement of visitors with their “eyes,” as if trying to hypnotize them and subjugate them to their will. In this creepy place, many people have to really hold back from screaming in fear.

The famous Museum of Criminal Anthropology in Turin was founded in 1898 by the criminal physiognomist Cesare Lombroso. This museum houses a collection of about four hundred skulls of various people. All this is a consequence of the founder's obsession with the idea that criminal tendencies and various behavioral deviations are determined by the shape and size of a person's skull. It was for this reason that the doctor collected the skulls of madmen, criminals, soldiers and ordinary citizens. His collection consists of life-size skeletons, human brains and images of dissected bodies. The main "feature" of the museum is the head of Lombroso himself, which is perfectly preserved and stored in a glass chamber.

A terrifying museum called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death was founded in 2005 by Scientologists who criticize the treatment of psychiatric illnesses and mental disorders. The museum's exhibits show how a global conspiracy of doctors and pharmacists helped exterminate the American Indians and Australian Bushmen, leading to apartheid and the Holocaust. The museum's Los Angeles building also serves as the headquarters of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

The original Barbed Wire Museum opened in 1971 in the US state of Kansas. It tells all visitors about the history and evolution of barbed wire, which is often called the "Devil's Rope" by the people. Today, the museum's exhibition consists of more than 2,000 types of barbed wire, the most valuable exhibits dating back to the 19th century. The sightseeing tour includes a visit to the Barbed Wire Hall of Fame and a research library. Most visitors also visit the cinema, where an educational film is shown about the history of this unusual, but very profitable industry.

The Mutter Museum of Medical History is a museum of human diseases and pathologies, ancient medical equipment and biological exhibits, located in an old medical complex in the USA. Most of all, this museum is "famous" for its unimaginable collection of skulls, but that's not all - within the walls of this creepy institution are collected all sorts of unique exhibits, for example, the corpse of a woman turned into soap in the ground where she was buried, Siamese twins with one liver, the skeleton of a newborn child with two heads and much more. Entrance to this nightmarish museum is prohibited to all faint-hearted and impressionable natures, as well as pregnant women and children.

An American couple managed to get into the Guinness Book of Records thanks to rabbits - Candice Frazee and Steve Lubanski converted their house into a real museum of cute rodents. Their mansion in Pasadena has a collection of 28.5 thousand different items, one way or another connected with rabbits and hares. And it all started with an innocent gift, when the couple in love exchanged toy animals on Valentine's Day. After that, they began to constantly give each other rabbits and everything connected with them - postcards, clay figurines, toys, dishes, lamps, furniture, bathroom accessories, and, in the end, decided to get live rabbits. All this led to the museum that opened in 1999.

The UFO Museum and Research Center in New Mexico is one of the five most visited museums in the United States. This fact is quite logical, because people have always wanted to touch the mystery of the supernatural, flying saucers and aliens. Most of the exhibits presented in the museum are ordinary images on the screen or on sheets of paper, but there are exceptions among them, such as a sarcophagus lid from Mexico or a container of dirt collected after a UFO crash that occurred in one of the local deserts in 1947. Obviously, it was this incident that became the starting point for the creation of a thematic museum in the southwest of America.

It is noteworthy that the gloomy hearse museum is located in the building of the main funeral home of Catalonia. Anyone can enter the dark basement of this establishment, and absolutely free of charge, although there are usually very few people willing to do so. In several halls of the museum, you can see old funeral carriages upholstered in black velvet, funeral carts, carriages and modern hearses, which have been used to see off Barcelona residents on their final journeys from the 18th century to the present day. The Barcelona museum also has the world's first funeral cars of the famous Studebaker brand and more modern vehicles intended for these mournful purposes.

In 2009, the capital of Germany hosted the grand opening of a thematic museum dedicated to fried sausages with curry powder and a special ketchup-based sauce. The reason for the appearance of such an unusual object is the sixtieth anniversary of the dish adored by Germans. Acquaintance with the German delicacy takes place within the framework of an interactive exhibition, which includes a story about the history of the origin and role of Currywurst sausages in the country's culture, as well as an introduction to the most delicious and unusual recipes for this dish. It is worth admitting that the popularity of the museum itself is significantly inferior to the cafe operating with it, where the legendary dish can be tried in combination with a variety of sauces.