Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum, also known as ROM was opened in 1914, with the mission “to inspire wonder and build understanding of human cultures and the natural world”. Today it has more than 40 galleries dedicated to natural science, art, and archaeology, housing over six million objects, making it the largest museum in Canada. There is even a biodiversity gallery that offers visitors insight into how animals, plants, and humans are interdependent on each other. One can never have enough of this museum, and if you are in Toronto, your trip will be incomplete unless put the Royal Ontario Museum on your itinerary.

A more recent and spectacular addition to the museum was made in June 2007 with the unveiling of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal which has six permanent collection galleries. These include a combination of never-seen-before exhibits and some old classics like dinosaurs. Along with that you get to see the cultures of the American continents, South and Central Asia, Asia-Pacific Region and Africa.

The Royal Ontario Museum is spread over three floors, and every year 67,000 objects related to archeology, sociology, paleontology, genealogy, and geology are added to it. The museum attracts more than a million visitors annually who come away fascinated by the Egyptian mummies, Chinese artifacts, objects related to the ancient world of Greece, Cyprus, reflections of the Bronze Age, and artwork from all around the world.

Among the things to see is the ROM’s Stair of Wonders. As you climb the stairs, you are taken through curiosities that are encased behind glass walls. Some of the curios you are going to come across are a hippo jawbone that weighs 20 kg, stuffed birds of paradise, antique toy soldiers, and fossils. The Nubia Gallery is another area that you can’t afford to miss. It shows remains of a human settlement dating back to 1000-800 BC that was unearthed in Northern Sudan.

Children will be especially taken in by the natural world that has, apart from dinosaurs, a bat cave, and galleried dedicated to mammals and birds. There are galleries where children can learn from hands-on experience, and the CIBC Discovery Gallery has arranged for a dinosaur dig, which is a particular favorite with children. So is the Evolution Gallery that takes you through Darwin’s theories of evolution with the help of an audiovisual presentation.

Other things worth a look are Gallery of Korean Art, the Ming tomb in an intact condition in the Chinese gallery, the Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art, and the contemporary secret garden that was built in the memory of Elizabeth Samuel.

Even if you hated history as a subject in school and failed it every single year, you will find a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum fascinating. You may not enjoy reading pages and pages on historical facts, but there is something different about walking through history and sampling it with the help of ancient relics.