PLACES TO VISIT
Treasure Houses of our Heritage We look here at some of the immense variety of artefacts to be found and enjoyed in Europe’s museums. They range from man’s earliest creations, through Roman and medieval relics, to survivors of our industrial age – treasures perhaps of the future. RICHARD K. EVANS FRPS
Museum of the North, Beamish, County Durham. This four-wheeled tank engine is preserved and active hauling visitors at the Beamish site; it was built by the North Eastern Railway in 1890.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Marble statue ‘Vertumnus and Pomona’, made in 1725 by sculptor Laurent Delvaux.
Museum of Mechanical Musical Instruments, Rudesheim, Germany.
Kremlin Museum, Moscow. The ‘Czar’s Cannon’ of 1586, ordered by Ivan IV. It weighs 40 tons and has a 35-inch bore. 18
Titled ‘A Musical Celebration in the Land of the Dolls’, this is the largest Orchestrion with automata ever made. It was constructed in Buffalo, New York in 1890 by Bernhard Duffner from Furtwangen in Bavaria’s Black Forest, from where he had emigrated in 1865. The 27 dancers and instrumentalists are operated pneumatically, playing and dancing to eleven different tunes.
