The best film museums to visit around the world

To create the illusion of “movie magic”, cinema has always relied on “smoke, mirrors and sleight of hand”, said Evelyn Richards in National Geographic. With the help of cutting-edge technology and behind-the-scenes brilliance, “monsters tower over cities, broomsticks take flight and hand-drawn sketches become fantastical worlds”. The film industry spans all continents, which means there are many fascinating museums where you can learn all about what it takes to “make the impossible look real”. Here are some of the best.

Lumière Museum, Lyon, France

If you want to understand cinema, it “helps to visit where it all began”, said Richards in National Geographic. The Lumière family’s photographic plate factory is aptly located on the Rue du Premier-Film. This was the setting for “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”, filmed in 1895 by Louis Lumière, and “considered one of the world’s first real motion pictures”. In the “ornate art nouveau” Lumière family home, you can look at early cameras, objects and archive material that chart the moving-picture experiments the Lumière brothers conducted. And the “Hangar du Premier-Film, where that pioneering footage was filmed, fittingly houses a cinema today”.
institut-lumiere.org

Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, Italy

The “vertical museum” in northern Italy “takes visitors on an elevator ride through cinema history”, said Chonx Tibajia in Tatler Asia. It is housed in the “striking” Mole Antonelliana, once the tallest masonry building in Europe. One of the museum’s main draws is its variety: “expect vintage cameras, interactive installations and rare stills, from Italian neorealism to spaghetti westerns”. And, once you’ve climbed 500ft to the top, you can sit back and enjoy an extraordinary, panoramic view – a “real-life establishing shot of the city”.
museocinema.it

Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, US

This new museum, created by Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas, gets “five out of five (death) stars from me”, said Kinvara Balfour in The Telegraph. Its “sleek and spaceship-like” design is “comfortable and spacious” both outside and in: “rather like an Apple headquarters on Mars, with a big garden and some Yoda statues on plinths”. There are more than 40,000 exhibits, including a digital Sistine Chapel, silent films, archive material and, of course, plenty of Star Wars and Indiana Jones costumes, props and vehicles. You can also venture beyond film to see art from Banksy, Norman Rockwell and Diego Rivera. It’s a “once-in-a-century kind of a public offering”.
lucasmuseum.org

Sound of Music Museum, Salzburg, Austria

For fans of the cult 1965 film who wish to “start at the very beginning”, this new Austrian museum “could be a very good place to start”, said Joshua Thurston in The Times. The exhibitions celebrate both the singalong classic and the story of the real-life Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis in 1938. In the 17th-century Hellbrunn Palace, “where many scenes from the film were shot”, you can see “nearly 450 objects, including props, costumes and recordings of the music”. The highlight is a replica of the pavilion used as a backdrop when Liesl von Trapp and her suitor Rolf Gruber sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”.
salzburg.info

Ghibli Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Even if you haven’t seen “My Neighbour Totoro” or “Spirited Away”, a tour of this museum dedicated to Studio Ghibli’s work will leave you “mesmerised”, said Gregory Wakeman in Smithsonian Magazine. It’s a “children’s, technology and fine arts museum all rolled into one”, and a love letter to animation. The space is designed by Hayao Miyazaki, the studio’s co-founder, so that both adults and kids “can aimlessly walk around and get lost”. The architecture is “gorgeous”, with bridges, balconies, buildings and a rooftop garden. Superfans can also take a trip to Ghibli Park, four hours south of Tokyo, which “brings to life” many of the settings of Ghibli movies, including Mononoke Village from “Princess Mononoke” (1997) and Howl’s Castle from “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004).
ghibli-museum.jp