Family days out and family attractions: Top 10 Museums for Families in Europe

As our colleague Dea Birkett announces the winner of this year’s Guardian Family-Friendly Museum award, we’ve listed museums that, while not necessarily the best children’s museums in Europe, or indeed particularly child-friendly venues, are places in which we’ve had a fabulous time and that we feel don’t get the credit they deserve. Give them a go – you won’t regret it.

See also our tips page on Visiting Museums with Kids.

Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece
Long awaited, the new Acropolis Museum, which finally opened in 2009, is a magnificent marble and glass space from much of which you can glimpse the Acropolis itself. It’s a wonderful place to introduce your children to the wonders of Ancient Greece, but unless you’re a Classical scholar, you’ll need a guidebook or a guided tour – labelling is minimal.  There’s also a film in English on the history of the Acropolis in English. Bring some paper to get your kids drawing, and refuel in very good café/restaurant with its stunning views. Note of warning: wear trousers if you’re a woman (or a Scotsman), as the top floor is pretty much made of glass, leading to some embarrassing exposure for those in skirts!


Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland
For all budding Olympiads or simply those excited about the 2010 Games in London, this museum in the beautiful city of Lausanne on Lake Geneva charts the history of the Olympics from their Ancient Greek roots to today. Among the many iconic objects on display are Carl Lewis’ ‘golden shoes’ and Chris Boardman’s revolutionary bike.  There is also a multitude of clever, interactive, multimedia features and a lovely park that also displays sport-related art.

Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy
It’s hard not to be moved by the sheer scale and beauty of the treasures on display here, and though it’ll be an overwhelming experience for most kids, it’ll be so in a good way. Many parents avoid bringing children, put off by the crowds and the size of the museums, but you can largely avoid the hordes by going in the winter months or in the afternoon, after the coach parties have left. Buy advance tickets (shop around a little) to avoid the queues, and get a map of the museums before you go and decide what you want to see. The Sistine Chapel really is extraordinary, and you shouldn’t miss the other Michelangelo statues. Ask for the children’s trail, ‘Alice in the Museum of Wonders’, at the front desk.

Ateneum, Helsinki, Finland
Finland’s National Gallery, housing many fabulous paintings from both Finland and abroad, is a frankly bonkers place with a refreshing approach to its art that makes it very appealing to families, offering workshops and trails on topics such as Compassion, Sorrow and Solitude that help kids (and parents) examine the works in an original and absorbing way. The equally potty events, often done in English, range from Picasso carnivals to button workshops accompanied by balloons and accordion music…

El Castell de Guadalest, near Alicante, Spain
This fascinating and evocative little town, literally hanging from a cliff, is a living monument, with eight museums within its walls and a ruined 12th-century castle. Kids love running through the twisting ancient, streets and popping in and out of some of the frankly bizarre little museums – the Museum of Torture may not be on the agenda, but the Magic Garden of Figures outside the Ribera Girona Museum is a must, as is the Micro-Gigantic Museum, holding miniatures to inspect with a magnifying glass (including a flea riding a bike on a seed) as well as giant sculptures. You can also take part in ‘Geocaching’ – hi-tech treasure hunts whereby you set off from the town armed with a GPS, walkie talkies and maps to hunt down goodies hidden by other families in the valley around the town. 

Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal
This wonderful, often-overlooked museum holds much of the priceless art collection of the late Calouste Gulbenkian, a fabulously wealthy oil magnate of Armenian birth. Like London’s British Museum in miniature, it’s a great, eclectic collection of ‘stuff’, from fabulous golden Egyptian masks and Persian cats to European masters and a world-renowned collection of Lalique. Get the kids to devise a trail for you, whereby they choose a particular object and then set clues for you to follow, then reward them with a runaround in the lovely little park.

Cites des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, France
Imagine the Eden Project, the now-defunct London Planetarium and London’s Science Museum all rolled into one and moved to Kew Gardens, and you’d just about get a handle on Europe’s biggest science museum. It has a well-thought-out and original kids’ section, the Cité des Enfants, where small children get to experiment, play with water and generally learn through having fun, and older kids 7-12 have an area offering all manner of science-based madness. Parents seem to have as much fun as the kids. The Cité also has an IMAX cinema, a planetarium, a submarine, and several decent restaurants..

Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France
France’s main botanical garden, a beautiful place alongside the Seine, is home to four museums of the National Museum of Natural History – the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution, the Mineralogy Museum, the Paleontology Museum and the Etomology Museum – plus a small zoo, a maze and a carousel of extinct species, the Dodo Manège. It’s perfect for kids – when they tire of the displays, they can run around the park, visit the zoo, swelter in the greenhouses, chase the butterflies and get lost in the maze, returning to the dinosaur bones with renewed interest after letting off some steam.

NEMO Science Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
This modern, interactive science museum designed for children offers lots of exciting experiments to take part in and things to blow up and climb over. Its one rule is that you must touch everything… music to the ears of parents accustomed to having to snatch children’s hands away before a guard arrives. In summer the slanting roof of the ship-shaped building becomes an urban ‘beach’. See also our feature on Amsterdam with Young Kids.

Musée des Enfants, Brussels, Belgium
Another purpose-built museum for children, this time aged 4-12, Belgium’s Children’s Museum is all about education through fun. Plunge your hands into gloop, crawl through mirrored tunnels, play dress up in eccentric costumes and have a magical Alice in Wonderland ride… these are just a few of the activities. Sign up at the front desk for workshops that might let you follow the course of blood, take photos with an enormous camera or learn about the colour red.