Top 10 Unusual and Bizarre Museums Around the World

1. The Juliette C. Red Light Museum, Virginia City Virginia. You need go no further than the state that saw the birth of our nation's 13 colonies to see the seedier side of American Culture.It celebrates quite simply a Virginia City whore house that did a brisk business back during the Old West. Here, you will see plenty of photographs depicting some of the business dealings between the owners and well known public individuals, as well as artifacts such as an antique vibrator and "lipstick condom case." For more information please visit the website: http://www.museumsusa.org/museums/info/1165056

2. Liberace Museum, Las Vegas, NV. None of us can ever forget the unabashed flash and flamboyance of the late Vegas pianist/performer Liberace. The next time you take a trip to sin city, you can see his persona immortalized at the Liberace museum. The museum contains two galleries, one of the them filled with Liberace's ridiculous collection of pianos and automobiles which include his Phantom V Landau Rolls Royce paneled with mirror tiles and featuring carvings of galloping horses. The other features his Rhinestone collection which includes the largest single piece of Rhinestone in the world, a Rhinestone covered piano, Mercedes, and a mink coat boasting 40,000 pieces of 2.5 Karat Austrian Rhinestone. For more information please visit the website: http://www.liberace.org/

3. Burlesque Hall of Fame, Las Vegas, NV. Here you'll find information tracing stripping, once known as Burlesque, all the way back to the 19th century. Among the artifacts you can admire are ivory fans used by Sall Rand, gloves and a black shoulder cape worn by Gypsy Rose Lee, and even a Heart Shaped Couch that once belonged to Jayne Mansfield. For more information please visit the website: http://www.burlesquehall.com/support.html

4. The Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments, Prague, Czechoslovakia. If you're into the darker side of the bizarre, this museum will bring you back to the days of the rack and iron maiden and some of the other most ingenious devices of pain in history. Various head crushers and disembowelment tools are in display for you during a 45 minute tour of devices used to extract information from unwilling "heretics". You can even view the famous garatta chair which was used to drive a screw through the seated person's skull. For more information please visit the website: http://goeasteurope.about.com/od/czechrepublic/p/torturemuseumcz.htm

5. The Serial Killer Museum, Florence Italy. Here you can also explore the darkest side of pure individual evil . On your tour, learn about the exploits of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey, Charles Manson and more, as well as the detailed, and gruesome, painstaking forensic work it took to capture them. Some of the more "exotic" displays include wax models of John Wayne Gacey in his infamous clown costume and another one of the notorious Wisconsin cannibal killer Ed Gein in his shack working with the skin of one of his victims. For more information please visit: http://british-european-city-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/serial_killer_museum_in_florence

6. Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum in Plano, TX. After winning a contest for capturing the world's largest cockroach and garnering an appearance on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, Michal Bohdan decided to pursue the novelty further and served as a judge at a cockroach dress up contest. This eventually inspired him to open his museum, where he showcased dead and preserved roaches dressed as celebrities - among them are "Marilyn Monroach", "David Letterroach" and "Liberochi" dressed in a tuxedo and seated at a mini piano. He does have one live one that extends four inches in length and an inch thick. Also, in case you need a snack during your tour, he has barbecued roach larvae to munch on. For more information please visit: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/TX-CockRoachHallOfFame.html

7. Sing Sing Museum in Ossining, NY. A safe distance from the actual prison, you still get to see authentic confiscated weaponry, and have a curator demonstrate the proper use of shanks and "eye gouging" techniques in prison fights. You even get to see an exact replica of the original Sing Sing electric chair. For more information please visit: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2177

8. Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, Fall River, Mass. Historical Society. 100 years after Borden took a hatchet to her parents, the brutal crime turned folklore has become a macabre tourist attraction with the original bedding and pillow cases that still contain actual blood from the famous "40 whacks." Also visible are actual chunks of hair and paper bag markers tagging where certain internal organs ended up. Original crime scene photos are also on display so you can appreciate the shear magnitude of Borden's burst of rage. For more information please visit: http://www.lizzie-borden.com/

9. Museum of the Weird, Austin Texas. If want a cornucopia of the bizarre, the beautiful city of Texas hides this showcase of the most bizarre spectacles and collection of photos and claims they can get their hands on. From Bigfoot, to shrunken heads, mermaids and the downright inexplicable, visit their website http://museumoftheweird.com/ for contact info and a preview.

10. UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell New Mexico. Regardless of what you believe about UFOs, whether they are merely unidentified flying objects of some earthly origin or vehicles of extra terrestrials, something happened in Roswell New Mexico in 1947 and not all the claims of outer space craft can be proven 100% false. So, the legend lives on, and this is the perfect place to indulge you curiosity in a town where the legend will never die. For more information, please visit the website http://www.roswellufomuseum.com/.