MUSEUMS – THE NEW CATHEDRALS

With these 7 tips the museum visit will be a success …

The best architects in the world are commissioned to design museums. A fascinating world can open up when visiting a museum and become an experience that will be remembered for a long time. This way you avoid stress during your visit to the museum and concentrate on enjoying it:

1. planning

During the vacation months, when everyone seems to be out of town, it’s often easy to spontaneously visit an interesting museum in your own city. In popular vacation cities such as Florence, London or Paris, on the other hand, a spontaneous visit to a well-known museum is usually not possible during the vacation season. It is safer to plan and research in advance.

Most of the museums that see a lot of visitors or present block-buster exhibitions during popular travel periods offer the possibility of purchasing online tickets in advance with a precisely scheduled entrance time.

It would be a shame if you were standing in front of the British Museum in London or the Foundation Beyeler in Basel with great anticipation and couldn’t get tickets to an exhibition you had been looking forward to for a long time.

2. sustainable enjoyment

One museum a day is enough to process the many impressions and store them in the memory. If you have limited time and want to visit several museums in one day, plan the first visit in the early morning, right at the opening time of the first museum and in the late afternoon visit the second museum.

If possible, avoid visiting on weekends, when most museums are often very busy.

3. public museums or private museums

Endowed with generous PR funds, public museums have a high profile. However, in almost every city or in interesting landscapes, there are private museums, far less known, whose visit is worthwhile because they deal with unusual topics and the exhibits are usually selected with a lot of love, individuality and collector’s passion.

Most often, private museums are located in an unusual place, such as the Langen Foundation on the former rocket station Hombroich, the private collection of Maurizio Morra Greco in the Palazzo Caracciola di Avellino in Naples, or the museum of the collector Grazyna Kulcyk in the small town of Susch in the Swiss Engadine, as well as the Ando Museum on the Japanese island of Naoshima, designed by the Japanese architect Tadeo Ando.

This list is of course incomplete, but you notice, we would like to recommend the private museums to you. Some private museums, such as the Goetz Collection in Munich, require advance registration by name via e-mail. With research ahead of time, you will be rewarded with special museum experiences.

4. less is more

Having seen every room in a museum often means only a fraction of the enjoyment. Pick the highlights in the museum you want to see beforehand and stick to your original plan once you are in the museum.

Spending half an hour in front of a painting or installation is usually a much more lasting enjoyment of art than rushing through every hall.

5. avoid the queues at the cash desk

For many museums or exhibitions, you can book tickets in advance and avoid the usual queues at the ticket offices. Depending on the museum, a special time of day, very early in the morning or late in the evening may be recommended to experience the exhibits in a special lighting mood.

Some museums offer special tours in the late evening or even at night. The main streams of visitors have already disappeared by this time and the museum has a very special charm.

Again, the longer you plan ahead, the more certain you can be to visit the museum in the time slot you want.

6. individual tours

A visit to the museum becomes a special experience with an individual guided tour. The more specific you are about what you want in advance, the more interesting the subsequent visit will be.

For example, if you would like to learn about the architecture or history of a museum, ask in advance for a guided tour that focuses particularly on these aspects and perhaps shows only a few highlights of the museum.

The earlier and more precisely you express your wishes, the better the museum will be able to provide an expert who will make your tour a very special experience.

7. body and soul

Often art can be combined well with pleasure. The Foundation Beyeler in Basel, for example, offers a delightful art breakfast at Café BEY followed by a guided tour of one of the current exhibitions. Many museums have excellent cafes or restaurants.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is even home to The Modern, a restaurant that has been awarded two Michelin stars. The seats in the architecturally interesting Team Room in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the tables in the courtyard always fill up immediately, and the terrace of the Palais Populaire in Berlin is also a popular place for a nice lunch in wonderful surroundings on sunny days.

So again, it pays to plan ahead and reserve a table before or after your visit to the museum.

In addition to the large, often crowded cafés, some museums have smaller, less crowded places, to the left or right of the main entrance area, in small courtyards or on a roof terrace.

In connection with an individual guided tour, it is often possible to arrange a table reservation in the museum’s special bars or restaurants, which are usually reserved only for members of the Friends of the respective museums.