Museum

The museum The Beatles Story (Britannia Vaults, Albert Dock, Liverpool, England; phone +44 0 151 709 1963, www.beatlesstory.com) celebrates Liverpool’s most famous musicians. 

Displays are now at two locations, the Albert Dock district and Mersey Ferry Terminal, and include an audio tour narrated by John Lennon’s sister, a short movie on the “Fab 4,” rooms that celebrate their solo careers, an interactive children’s area and a Starbucks.

 Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. £12.25 (near $19.50) adult.

The Technik Museum Sins­heim (Museums­platz, D-74889, Sinsheim, Germany; phone +49 [0] 7261 9299 0, fax 1391 6, www.museum-sinsheim.de) in Sinsheim exhibits over 300 classic cars, 200 motorcycles, 60 aircraft, 20 locomotives and 40 racing cars, not to mention the first Air France Concorde and a large Formula 1 exhibition.

€18 (near $27) adult. An IMAX theater screens transportation-related films (€10). Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9-8 Saturday-Sunday. A two-hour tour in English costs €80 ($111); book at least 14 days ahead.

The Transport Museum Dresden (Augustusburg 1, 01067 Dresden, Germany; phone +0351 86440, fax 8644-110, www.verkehrsmuseum-dresden.de [in German]) exhibits locomotives from 1924 to 1993 (such as the Saxon Muldenthal, built in 1861), cars, trams, motorbikes (the first gasoline-powered motorcycle, built in 1885), bicycles, hot-air balloons and airplanes.

It is located at the Johanneum, a Renaissance building (1586) where the Electors of Saxony kept their horses and carriages. Open 10-5 Tuesday-Sunday. €4.50 adult. Guided tour, €40 ($56).

In Lyon, the Gadagne Museum Center (Renaissance Building, 1 place du Petit Collège, 69005 Lyon, France; phone 011 33 04 78 42 03 61, fax 78 42 79 71, www.gadagne.musees.lyon.fr), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has undergone a 10-year, €30-million restoration and reopened to the public. The complex houses the Puppets of the World Museum and the History Museum of Lyon.

From exhibitions on ingredients and spices to items such as a sausage-shaped sofa, the Deutsches Currywurst Museum (Schützenstraße 70 10117 Berlin; phone +49 30 88718647, www.currywurstmuseum.de/en) has a number of playful exhibitions about the popular German sausage currywurst. €11 adult, €7 senior/student, and free for children under six.

In Malta, the Carmelite Priory Museum (Carmelite Priory, Villegaignon St., Mdina, Malta; phone +356 2702 0404, www.carmelitepriorymuseum.com) opened its priory and church to the public in June. 

The Carmelite Church, built in 1675, has an unusual elliptical floor plan, and the newly restored priory shows how the Carmelite friars lived. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. €4 adult.

In London, the Whitechapel Gallery (77-82 Whitechapel High St., London, E1 7QX, U.K.; phone +44 [0] 20 7522 7888, www.whitechapelgallery.org) has doubled in size, reopening with expanded galleries, exhibitions, collection displays, archives and more.

Free weekly poetry readings, art lectures and open screenings of films are held on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. For Wednesday and Friday evenings, ticketed events in music, performance and workshops can be booked in advance.

When the Neues Museum opens in Berlin on Oct. 16, 2009, after an 11-year, $255-million restoration, it will be the first time in 70 years that all five museums on Museum Island will be open to the public.

The new, 3-story Acropolis Museum, 1,000 feet southeast of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, opened June 20. Hundreds of statues and artifacts from the old museum and around the Acropolis are displayed in one building for the first time.

The top floor holds the Athens fragments of the Parthenon Frieze, with white plaster copies in the spaces left for the rest of the fragments, the “Elgin Marbles,” currently and controversially in the British Museum in London.

Given the economy, the number-one question I’ve gotten lately from people is whether to go to Europe or not. It’s true that many people will put off their trips for another time, but millions of globetrotters — who see exploring our world as a way of life — will find a way to keep on traveling.