The Type Of Museums In Europe Rick Steves Warns Are Total Tourist Traps

There are plenty of places throughout Europe with morbid medieval histories. The medieval hole prisons in Nuremberg, for example, with its shackles, thumbscrews, and gruesome guided tours. The Tower of London is also a ghoulish place, although it was nearby Tower Hill that saw the vast majority of executions. These are sites of legitimate historical interest, unlike the numerous "torture museums" scattered across Europe. 

Rick Steves laments the preponderance of "juvenile torture exhibits" that do good business by appealing to what he terms the "lowest desires of dumbed-down travelers." These exhibits are so widespread across Europe's large cities that Steves suspects that there is a "gory-gear catalog" somewhere distributing iron maidens and other diabolical torture equipment. 

Tourist traps come in many forms. They can be shallow landmarks like the Blarney Stone, commercial restaurants like Hard Rock Cafe, or tourist-riddled gridlocks like Times Square. Some are worse than others, and that is true of Europe's torture museums. Still, the general advice is the same — avoid. 

Rick Steves' favorite places in Europe, but the city's Museum of Torture has a 3.0 rating on Trip Advisor from 377 reviews — a decidedly middling score. Generous reviewers wrote that the museum is quick but creepy and informative. Others, however, did not mince their words. 

One visitor described it as "short and underwhelming," adding that it took just 10 minutes to see and had little atmosphere. Another was harsher, calling the attraction a "waste of time and money" that required phone flashlights to navigate because it was so poorly lit. We understand a dark environment might be spooky, but if you can't read the displays — it's just annoying.

Despite the mixed reaction, Prague's Museum of Torture fared better than its Dutch equivalent. The Torture Museum in Amsterdam has over 700 reviews on Trip Advisor, producing an even lower score of 2.5. "Please save your money on this. It is not worth it," wrote one user, "They had very basic items and not as much information as they should."