Located on the Museumsinsel, an island in the Isar River, this is the largest science and technology museum in the world and one of the most popular attractions in Germany. It’s at least a 15- or 20-minute walk from the sights around Marienplatz, so you’ll probably want to block out at least half a day to visit here—you’ll need it, because this huge collection includes some 15,000 exhibits in 50 department. True, most of the important inventions highlighted here are German-made, but that’s because Germans were at the forefront of so many scientific developments in the 19th century and onward—such as the first electric dynamo (built by Siemens in 1866), the first diesel engine (Rudolf Diesel, 1897), and the laboratory bench at which the atom was first split (Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann, 1938). Some exhibits are interactive, and there are regular demonstrations of glass blowing, papermaking, and how steam engines, pumps, and historical musical instruments work. You’ll see historic items from the ancient (a full-scale replica of the famous cave full of Stone Age paintings found in Altamira, Spain) to the dawn of the modern era (a Model A biplane flown by the Wright brothers at Tempelhof airport in 1908) to the future (labs where you can study DNA). The astronomy exhibit is the largest in Europe, complete with a planetarium and a two-domed observatory with a solar telescope. Unless you have a keen interest in science and technology, however, this enormous museum can be a bit mind-numbing, because many of its historic objects are displayed as relics without much dynamic presentation. The Verkehrszentrum, the museum’s spin-off transportation museum (see below), is far more intriguing. Note: The Deutsches Museum is currently undergoing an modernization program that will run through 2019; while the museum will remain open, various sections will be closed for renovation, so check on-line to see which areas are affected at the time of your visit.