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Today is International Museum Day, and that means that many of the city’s finest museums are letting you waltz around without spending a cent.

If you’re not pinned down staring at a screen all day, I suggest you get stuck in and make everyone at work jealous.

Over on Inside Guide they have a list of the city’s best museums, and amongst all the usual suspects are a few that you might not have heard of.

We’ll start with the basics:

IZIKO SOUTH AFRICAN MUSEUM [pictured above]

Founded in 1825, our country’s oldest museum has seen millions of people navigate through its halls. Take in exhibitions of more than 1.5 million specimens – accumulated over almost 200 years – including ancient fossils and stone tools, rock and meteorite samples, lifelike recreations of our country’s indigenous people using real pieces, as well as marine and wild animal displays and features.

Bummer alert – the Planetarium is shut for an upgrade for the next few months, so you’ll have to get baked and stare at your own roof.

WARRIOR TOY MUSEUM

If you thought museums were only for a select few, Warrior Toy Museum will make you think again. Dedicated to toys of all shapes, sizes, models, makes and themes, it’s a great place for young and old to visit in Simon’s Town.

It’s a place to create new memories with your own children, expand your collector’s knowledge, or take a trip back in time, as nostalgia reawakens the golden days of your childhood…

[They have] permanent display of some 4 000 model cars, 500 dolls, as well as a wide assortment of teddy bears, miniature doll houses (and rooms), a working toy railway, toy soldier displays, Meccano, beautifully crafted ships, old model cars, and much more.

GANGSTER MUSEUM

The first of its kind, 18 Gangster Museum is an innovative, living museum that seeks to provide a positive alternative and life path for Cape Town’s most gangster-ridden communities. Incorporating immersive text, imagery and a replica prison cell, as well as qualified tour guides and ex-offender curators, the museum is as inspirational as it is educational.

For R60 you get a tour, drinking water, and the satisfaction of knowing that your tour fee enables a local school child to visit this museum for free.

DISTRICT SIX MUSEUM

This museum, appropriately established in 1994, uses past memories and experiences to remember a once-vibrant community’s painful forced removals (and demolitions) in the apartheid era. So powerful has this museum’s contribution to the struggle for land and subsequent process of healing and restoration been, that it was declared a National Heritage Site in 2006.

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FIRST SOUTH AFRICAN PERFUME MUSEUM

This perfume museum (and workshop) is the first and only one of its kind on our continent. With comprehensive permanent collections, innovative exhibitions and display cabinets filled with perfumes of all ages (including an ancient Roman one that’s around 2 000 years old), it makes for a unique experience.

The museum works on an appointment only basis, so don’t just head there expecting to come out smelling like roses.

If you do make it through the doors you can ogle around 4 500 perfume bottles, which have been collected over the past 20 years by founders Dimo and Daniela Kumanov.

We’re only scratching the surface when it comes to the city’s abundance of museums – you can find a more comprehensive list HERE.

Happy #InternationalMuseumDay, friends.

[source:insideguide]