Sydney's Top 10 Museums

1 Australian Museum

Funnel webs, king browns, red backs, salties - all Australia's most deadly are here stuffed or behind glass. Laugh in mortality's face, glory in the wonders of natural history and scare the rellies off your sofa bed and onto the next flight home.

Best for... Natural history puffs, crocodile wrestling OH&S reps and budding taxidermists.

2 Nicholson Museum

Its Victorian reserve is perfect for an exhibition that includes mummified bodies and body parts amongst its 25,000 ancient objects. Haunting and beautiful, the Nicholson holds Australia's largest collection of antiques and will entice even the most reluctant Indiana.

Best for... Children who want to see a real-live-dead Mummy.

3 Australian National Maritime Museum

Whether it's the Harbour, the beaches or Finding Nemo, Sydney's bound to the water like a babe to the breast. Circumnavigate this Museum if you're keen jump to board a submarine and live out all your Hunt for Red October fantasies: "Torpedo impact, 20 seconds..."

Best for... Swashbucklers, explorers, fans of crying "Aroooga! We dive!"

4 Museum of Sydney

Smack bang on top of the foundations of Australia's first Government House, the MOS is a celebration of the city's past, present and future. With video walls, poetry, storylines and panoramas out onto the city we know and love this is exhibiting gone C21st!

Best for... Being a tourist in your own city, visiting friends and relics.

5 Powerhouse Museum

Despite the name, this is no place for sculpting "the guns". Hands-on exhibits, engineering excellence, Cyberworlds and nuclear exhibits (not live, thank God) mix beneath the Powerhouse's own formidable architecture: a hot-bed of science, design and innovation.

Best for... Gadgeteers & kids who like to push buttons (same thing really).

500 Harris St, Ultimo 2007. (02 9217 0100) Open daily 10am-5pm. Adult $10; children & concs. $5-6.  

6 Hyde Park Barracks Museum

Home to convicts, wastrel women, immigrants, law courts, a vaccine institute and a government printer, this place has seen it all in 190 years. Discover the people who built this city and, if you're really quiet, hear their footsteps echo down the halls.

Best for... Curious minds & city-proud Sydneysiders.

7 Justice and Police Museum

For history with a macabre twist-of-the-knife, ‘hit' the Justice and Police Museum. This old court house has seen many rapscallions sentenced for dastardly deeds. Spiked gates and winding stairways take you to pokey cells, murderous mug-shots and weapons to make the stomach turn.

Best for... Crime writers, Agatha Christie fans, delinquents.

8 Macleay Museum

Home to a billion year old meteorite, the Macleay makes you feel triumphantly young whatever your age. High on your own youth you'll have oodles of energy to take in their extensive natural history collection.

Best for... Fossils (insert age joke here)

9 Sydney Jewish Museum

You can't exhibit grief but you can explore it. The SJM has the dignified space needed to take us through events of the Holocaust with dignity.

Best for... Mulling life's bigger issues.

10 The Susannah Place Museum

The Rocks once teemed with working-class Aussies. Built in 1844, their terraces invoke humble glories.

Best for... Nosy parkers.

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