Museum & Observatory Sonnenborgh Utrecht (29-12-2005)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

I have lived near Utrecht most of my life so I have seen many of the museums there but somehow I had never yet been to this observatory, eventhough it's not far from the arts-academy I used to go to. Somehow there had never been a good reason to go to that part of city. But now, as Mark is very interested in all things celestial and the fact that there's also a special exhibit about Mars, we had perfect reasons to visit the museum & observatory.

The museum has an interesting history. Originally the Sonnenborgh was part of the defensive wall that protected Utrecht. This fortress was extremely modern at the time. Part of the museum is about the history of the fortress itself and you get to see a lot of the old building including the latrines (in which mushrooms are thriving by the way). Very interesting indeed!
Later on the building was used for metereological observations and some time later the solar observatory was built there. That part of the museum is interesting for every-one that likes old instruments with weird buttons you aren't allowed to touch ;-)

Inside the observatory there's also room for exhibits and it includes an old library (lovely!). The special exhibit about Mars was very funny and the pictures were great. You could also go upstairs and watch the two telescopes but sadly you could not watch anything through them :-(

This museum is really worth a visit because it's a very nice combination of old and new, archaeological and scientifical. It looks like a perfect spot for a professor from the Tintin comics. And it's not very expensive either!

Check their site (Dutch!): http://www.sonnenborgh.nl/