The Best Museums in Andorra
Andorra only has 18 museums in the whole country, but those it does have are both interesting and quirky. Here’s a list of eight of our favourite Andorran museums, from a perfume museum and a tobacco museum to a stately home.
1. The Perfume Museum
Museum, Store
Enjoy a sensory experience at the Museu de Perfum, located in Escaldes-Engordany. The first room of the museum is the Olfactory Station, where you can experiment with creating your own perfume from a range of scents in two different machines. Other rooms display hundreds of bottles of perfume, which you can find out about through audiovisual exhibits. There’s also a room dedicated to the history of perfume, detailing how it has become a must-have luxury item in the modern day.
2. The National Automobile Museum
Museum
The Museu Nacional de l’Automòbil is located in the village of Encamp and is dedicated to modes of transport. As well as automobiles, the museum also displays around 60 motorbikes and around 100 bicycles. The cars on display date from 1886 (the oldest in the museum) to the 1970s, and is one of the most important collections in Europe. As well as the vehicles themselves, the museum also has a range of posters, memorabilia and accessories on display.
3. The Tobacco Museum
Museum
The Museu del Tabac is located in the southwest of the country, in the village of Sant Julià de Lòria. Before tourism and the winter sport industry took over Andorra, it was tobacco that drove the country’s economy. The Tobacco Museum is actually housed in an old cigar factory and takes visitors on a journey of tobacco, from where and how it grows to the mixing and drying process, and then how the cigarettes and cigars are made.
4. The House Museum of Areny Plandolit
Museum, Memorial, Building
One of the most well known and important museums in Andorra is the Casa d’ Areny-Plandolit, which can be found in the village of Ordino. One of the only examples of a stately home in Andorra, it was originally built in the 12th century. The house was owned by the family of Don Guillem d’Areny-Plandolit, an iron magnate and an important person in the history of Andorra. Visitors will be taken on a guided tour of the house to see some of the belongings of this family, who were one of the few noble families in the country during the 19th and 20th centuries.
5. The Museum of Miniatures Nicolai Siadristy
Museum
The quirky Museu de la Miniatura, also located in Ordino, is filled with a wide variety of tiny objects, made by the Ukrainian artist Nicolai Siadristy. Created out of precious metals such as gold and silver or even grains of rice and seeds, the collection includes everything from tiny Russian dolls to crucifixes and religious icons. You’ll need to look through a magnifying glass or even a microscope to see most of the objects here.
6. The Ethnographic Museum Casa Cristo
Museum
Andorra’s Ethnographic Museum is located in a rural house in the village of Encamp. Inhabited by labourers up until the 1940s, the museum takes visitors on a journey back in time to the end of the 19th century, looking at how local Andorrans used to live at the time. Set up exactly the way it was, visitors will get to see inside various rooms, including the storeroom, the kitchen and the pantry.
7. The World Champions Museum by 99
Museum
Andorra’s World Champions Musueum by 99 is located in the capital of the country – Andorra la Vella. The museum is the private collection of racer Jorge Lorenzo and includes unique Formula One and Motorcycling World Champions memorabilia. Among other pieces, the museum features 27 objects belonging to several Formula One drivers, including Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.
8. The Carmen Thyssen Andorra
Museum
One of the newest museums in the country, this branch of Spain’s famous art museum – the Carmen Thyssen –opened in March of this year. Works featured here include those by Wassily Kandinsky, William Turner, Émile Bernard and Ramón Martí i Alsina.
Av. Carlemany, 37, Escaldes-Engordany, Andorra +376 800 800
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