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World's weirdest museums
  • Zagreb's Museum of Broken Relationships grew from an idea by Croatian Olinka Vistina and Drazen Grubisic who broke up a few years ago. The museum is a unique emotional journey around the world through hundreds of love break-ups. Each of the more than 700 items on display is explained by a love story.
  • A total of 500 sculptures sit four metres underwater in the Cancun Underwater Museum. Deep under the seas of the Mexican Caribbean the statues look like relics of an ancient civilisation located in the National Marine Park, on the west coast of Isla Mujeres, Punta Cancun and Punta Nizuc. As the world's largest underwater sculpture museum, it was designed to celebrate the Mayan history of the region and act as an artificial reef.

  • If you need some inspiration for your pet pooch’s first collar, head to Kent for a visit to the Dog Collar Museum at Leeds Castle, which has had hounds for hunting, gundogs and huge mastiffs to guard the gates. Taking you through dog collar designs of the past five centuries; it’s most probably the only place where you can compare historic hunting dog-style collars right up to Paris Hilton's doggy styles of today.
  • An homage to the culinary emblem of Germany's capital city – the currywurst, or curried sausage – the German Currywurst Museum features an interactive exhibition that takes visitors on a tour of discovery. In the Spice Chamber, sniffing stations reveal the secrets of the perfect currywurst recipe and visitors can even run their own snack bar. Then, when work is over, a sausage sofa sits invitingly in a stream of sauce. And, of course, the Snack Lounge serves currywurst in all its forms.
  • Cappadocia is best-known for its magnificent cave homes and quirky fairy chimneys, but one man has turned one of the historic caves into the bizarre and creepy Avanos Hair Museum. The weird museum contains hair samples of more than 16,000 women worldwide and was created by potter Chez Galip, who we're assuming has a strange obsession with hair. Each lock is taped to the walls of the cave with the name and address of its owner on display.
  • If you’re cuckoo about clocks then this unique museum in Cheshire will have you entertained for hours. Set up by Mancunian clock maker brothers, Roman and Maz Piekarski, Cuckooland is a collection of timepieces for over 40 years. In their collection of treasures you’ll find clocks, not only of the cuckoo kind but also quail and trumpeter clocks, which are set up to play at intervals throughout your visit.

  • What constitutes good art is a matter of opinion, but founder and curator of the Museum of Bad Art was pushed over the edge when he discovered 'Lucy in the Field with Flowers', an "inconceivably awful work of impossible angles", which inspired him to put together a collection of the most offensive attempts at art. There are 400 grimace-worthy pieces – 40 of which are on show at a time.
  • Caught short? Head to the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, where Dr Bindeshwar Pathak's worldwide research into the evolution of the human waste receptacle has resulted in a collection that some might call a load of old toilet. But pictures, exhibits – even poetry – relate the history of the toilet and related customs. Check out the chamber pots – veritable Victorian objets d'art – the French toilet disguised as a bookcase and the replica of King Louis XIII's throne, with its concealed commode.
  • Where other than the ancient land of Cornwall would you find a museum dedicated entirely to witchcraft? In the sleepy village of Boscastle, you’ll find the mysterious Witchcraft Museum filled with magical potions, incantations, spell ingredients, voodoo dolls, Ouija boards and the odd taxidermy cat!

  • Think parasite and most of us are flooded with images of intestinal worms or malarial mosquitoes, but the Meguro Parasitological Museum celebrates the 'wondrous and resourceful way of life' of these fascinating creatures. With 300 preserved specimens, the museum offers an overview of the world of parasites and their life cycles in an attempt to transform the visitor's preconceptions and to shed their feelings of fear.
  • You'd be forgiven for thinking that the world's first Cornish pasty museum might be based in Cornwall... but, in fact, it's located 5,000 miles away in Mexico. The museum in Real del Monte opened in 2012, in the town twinned with Redruth, and its links with Cornwall date back to the 1820s, when Cornish miners settled there, helping to boost the silver mining industry.
  • There are many reasons for being thankful for not being born in medieval times, but if one needed any more, then a visit to the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments in Prague should do the trick. More than 60 exhibits – including the nail-embedded Torture Chair – graphically illustrate the widely practised torture of heretics, witches, state enemies... perhaps even those who sneezed in the wrong manner. Not for the weak-stomached.
  • Lawnmowers? To us these garden machines just get in the way and take up too much space in the shed but apparently there's huge interest in the grass cutters and even the British Lawnmower Museum. At the museum in Merseyside, you can look at vintage lawnmowers, browse celebrity donations and check out some of the fastest lawnmowers in the world.
  • Some of us might be old enough to remember the joy of school dinners when it was the day for SPAM fritters – slices of tinned luncheon meat, battered, fried and squeaky on the teeth. But those who haven't had the pleasure should head to the SPAM Museum at the home of the Hormel Foods Corporation, which offers 16,500 square feet of interactive and educational exhibits, relating the product's history – from the role of SPAM Classic in World War Two to delicious modern-day recipes.
  • Iceland's Phallus Museum is bulging at the seams with the world's largest collection of penises. Those who visit this wonderfully weird museum in Reykjavik (and how can you not?) are treated to penile parts from 16 different kinds of whale, one specimen taken from a rogue polar bear and penises belonging to seven different types of seal. There's even a human penis donated by a 95-year-old after his death.

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