Night at the Museum

Imagining a tour around a museum at night really makes my imagination run wild. The statues are moving for sure, the eyes of the stuffed animals are following you, and older the building, greater the odds that there are ghosts in the night time, too. But no one gets to go to museums at night!

Tartu Museum of Zoology

Except that they do. May 14^th is the European Night of Museums. Around 3000 museums in 42 different countries open their doors for the public and also forget the entrance fees for Saturday night. In my eyes it is about a million times more exciting to enter a museum at night than it would be in daylight (although that is a nice way to spend time, too!). 

Estonian Literary Museum

The lucky thing is that I am in a city with a great selection of museums! “Öös on aardeid” is the Estonian theme this year –there are treasures in the night. A treasure hunt in a museum...could make you feel like Indiana Jones, couldn’t it? The open museums (all over Estonia) you can check here: http://www.muuseum.ee/et/kuum/muuseumioo/muuseumioo_2011. For Tartu I counted 18 museums being open on Saturday night, so in order to see even a half you have to run! Of course the ghosts that are there (I’m convinced) can make you run also.

Tartu Art Museum

I see also very creative thinking in this concept. This event attracts the local people, as it is often the tourists and other visitors who enter the museums. It can be easy to forget the sights around you, as they become a part of your daily surroundings, but maybe not nightly surroundings! So this Saturday evening: grab your torchlight, go out and sneak into a museum. And remember: there’s always someone inside the armour suit.