3. The Natural History branch of the National Museum of Ireland
Since the National Museum’s Merrion Square West building was put together in the second half of the 19th century, lightbulbs have been changed—and that’s about it. The National History Museum is often referred to as “the Dead Zoo,” and not only because it’s almost exclusively filled with taxidermy, preserved animals and insects, skulls, and skeletons.
The museum itself has undergone such little transformation since the days when Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde went to school around the corner that it stands essentially as a museum about how the Victorians put together natural history museums. Most of their taxidermy and preserved animals haven’t weathered the decades so well—take the terrifying, misshapen sharks hanging from the ceiling, or, for a real fright, the many species of bats whose wings have gone entirely translucent and are starting to crumble.