From taxidermy frogs to invented languages – 10 strange and amazing museums you can visit with a direct flight from Manchester Airport
Autumn is well and truly here, and unless you’re travelling to a winter sun hotspot, beach breaks are on pause until the Spring. But if you’re planning an autumn or winter getaway, there’s still loads to see and do in some of Europe’s most popular destinations in the off-season, and city-breakers will often use a trip at this time of year as an opportunity to soak up a different culture and explore sights and sounds far removed from what they’re used to at home – from the exotic and unfamiliar to the downright bizarre.
Manchester Airport’s enviable route network of more than 200 destinations places all four corners of the world within easy reach – and with that comes the opportunity to visit some of the quirkiest and most unusual tourist sites on the planet.
Here we run through some of the most weird and wonderful museums and visitor attractions on offer – and how to get there with a direct flight from Manchester Airport.
Mini Hollywood, Almeria
Fly to Almeria with Ryanair from £83pp return*
A film set in southern Spain’s Tabernas desert has doubled as the Wild West for half a century, hosting film shoots for iconic Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. More recently it was the location for an episode of Doctor Who set on the American Old Frontier.
The sprawling film set, Mini Hollywood, is just outside the popular Spanish beach resort of Almeria and has been converted into a theme park offering to transport visitors to the Wild West – complete with simulations of gunfight scenes, horse shows, a working saloon bar, recreations of a smithy and a mine works, and a Wild West play area.
Froggyland, Split
Fly to Split with Jet2.com from £101pp return*
If you’re looking for a wacky museum, it doesn’t get much stranger than Froggyland in the Croatian city of Split. It is – as the name suggests – a homage to all things amphibian, with a huge collection of taxidermy frogs displayed acting out a variety of elaborate scenes. These range from day-to-day scenarios like sitting in a classroom or eating dinner at a restaurant, through to circus shows and orchestral performances, complete with miniature instruments.
The collection, which is over 100 years old, was created by taxidermising the frogs through the mouth, leaving no visible incisions. When you’re done at Froggyland, explore Split’s Old Town, a large part of which is comprised of the remains of a palace built for the Roman emperor Diocletian.
Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb
Fly to Zagreb with Ryanair from £75pp return*
Staying in Croatia – which seems to be a hotspot for the weird and wonderful – you can learn more about the trials and tribulations of falling in love at the Museum of Broken Relationships. Located in the capital Zagreb, it gathers together more than 3,500 exhibits with a deeply personal tale of betrayal or domestic despair – including letters from scorned lovers, caricatured drawings, personal affects, a man’s dreadlocks he snipped off after breaking up with the partner who braided them over the course of 10 years – and even an axe used by a jilted woman to hack up her partner’s furniture.
You can see all this and more at the museum’s permanent exhibition in central Zagreb, which also has plenty of more orthodox museums looking at local history, archaeology and the life of Nicola Tesla.
Frietmuseum, Bruges
Fly to Brussels with Ryanair from £29pp return*
The world might call them ‘French fries’, but Belgium lays claim to be their true home, and the city of Bruges boasts the world’s only museum dedicated to the humble potato chip. The Frietmuseum guides visitors through hundreds of years of starchy snacking, looks at what dips are the best, and gives you the chance to sample some authentic Belgian fries as you go.
You can reach Bruges from Brussels with a one-hour train, giving you the chance to combine two city breaks into one and explore some of Brussels’ wackier attractions, including Mini Europe, with to-scale models of some of the continent’s most renowned landmarks.
The Icelandic Phallological Museum, Reykjavik
Fly to Reykjavik with easyJet from £63pp return*
The Icelandic Phallological Museum is the world’s only museum of its kind and what started as a small private collection has become famous across the globe for its unusual exhibitions featuring hundreds of preserved male specimens. These come from a variety of animals of all shapes and sizes, including humans – but all are dwarfed by a six-foot-long blue whale member. Other exhibits include lampshades made of bull scrotums and a cast of the man with ‘the longest urinary measurement ever recorded’. It also has a gift shop, selling what it describes as ‘unique souvenirs and playful gifts.’
Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo
Fly to Palermo with Jet2.com from £132pp return*
In northern Sicily, what was once a consecrated burial vault is now a macabre visitor attraction. It traces its origins to the 16th century when a local monastery ran out of space in its burial ground so started to embalm and inter deceased monks in a chamber beneath the monastery, where they could be visited by their surviving contemporaries who would look after their bodies and join them in prayer. Over the centuries, it became a status symbol to be interred here, with the great and good of Palermo joining the ranks of over 8,000 bodies laid on or hung from racks of ceramic piping along the walls. The last bodies were interred here in the 1930s and the catacombs are now open to the public, with tens of thousands of tourists visiting each year.
Memento Park, Budapest
Fly to Budapest with Ryanair from £50pp return*
The USSR and its satellite states were prolific producers of statues and monuments to tyrannical leaders and their causes – but after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the early 90s, many newly independent, or newly democratic nations were left with the question of what to do with all of these unwanted mementos. Budapest had a novel answer – gather them all in one place and turn it into an open-air museum. Memento Park showcases statues of Lenin, Marx and Engels – as well as what’s left of a statue of Stalin, cut off at the knees during Hungary’s October Revolution. Budapest has a unique way of addressing the darker parts of its history and assimilating them into a vibrant modern city – and its ruin bar culture has turned derelict buildings into the heart of a thriving nightlife scene.
QUAKE, Lisbon
Fly to Lisbon with Ryanair from £30pp return*
On 1 November 1755, a huge earthquake struck off the coast of Portugal’s capital city, reducing large areas to rubble. Half an hour later, 20ft tsunami waves crashed through Lisbon’s port and city centre. More than 50,000 people lost their lives in one of Europe’s worst-ever natural disasters – but it became the first major earthquake to be studied scientifically, rather than being explained away as an act of God, and it still shapes our understanding of earthquakes and tsunamis today.
The award-winning Lisbon Earthquake Museum, QUAKE, tells the story of what happened that day, with reconstructed streets showing the city as it was in the mid-18th Century, along with interactive exhibits and earthquake simulators, giving you the sensation of standing in the midst of the earthquake as it unfolded. You can then explore the modern streets, rebuilt after these events, on Lisbon’s iconic funicular trams.
Museum of Miniatures, Prague
Fly to Prague with easyJet from £52pp return*
The smallest bicycle in the world, made of pure gold. A train of camels sculpted into the eye of a needle. An inscription written on a human hair, and reproductions of world-famous artworks so small they can only be viewed through a microscope. All of this and more is displayed at Prague’s Museum of Miniatures, along with an explanation of the challenges faced by artists producing these miniscule masterpieces – from keeping a steady hand by working in between heartbeats, to avoiding static charges. Prague is host to other marvels of human ingenuity, too, like the medieval astronomical clock, centuries ahead of its time in terms of its complexity.
Esperanto Museum, Vienna
Fly to Vienna with Ryanair from £50pp return*
Vienna’s Esperanto Museum offers visitors the chance to ‘discover the fascinating world of language invention and the multifaceted history of’ the world’s most widely spoken constructed language. Created in 1887 by German linguist LL Zamenhof, the idea behind Esperanto was to design a language that was universally easy to learn and followed simple grammatical rules, so that it could be used as a global second language in a rapidly industrialising world. It had some early successes – including official recognition from the UN – but ultimately it was English, rather than Esperanto, that filled the niche. There are, however, more than 100,000 people alive today who can speak the language.
The Esperanto Museum displays curiosities like original works of literature written in Esperanto and wartime army recruitment posters, along with exhibits examining the history of constructed languages, including Klingon from Star Trek and the Elvish language from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
* Prices are the cheapest available return flights from Manchester before the end of October 2026. Prices are available when booked directly through the specified airline’s website and are correct at the time of publication. Hold baggage may not be included.