Destinations / The best places to visit in Canberra, Australia / The National Museum of Australia

  The National Museum of Australia is the greatest museum of all the museums from Canberra. Is located on Lawson Crescent Acton Peninsula and is considered to be Australia's most significant record keeper with files providing understanding about the nation's very beginning to its present.  The museum was opened in March 2001. And is one of the most visited museums in the City.  The museum has a really captivating building with a unique design. It profiles 50,000 years of indigenous heritage, the legacy of early colonization and settlement and key events including Federation and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

   The museum building is based on a theme of knotted ropes, symbolically bringing together the stories of Australians. The exterior of the building is covered in anodized aluminum panels. Many of the panels include words written in Braille and other decorative devices. The building's architecture is thus meant to imply that the story of Australia is not one story, but many stories tangled together. From faraway, the construction looks like a puzzle that needs to be solved. Just because of its incredible style, the museum attracts a lot of visitor of different ages, from children to grown-ups.
  The National Museum of Australia showcases the land and people of Australia and make known and enrich visitors' knowledge about the history of the nation through storytelling. It is one of Canberra’s favorite family attractions and is very often visited. The main exhibition that is visited especially by the whole family is the extensive and exciting permanent exhibition called First Australians. Here people can “enter” and discover the Australia’s past. Other permanent exhibitions of high interest are: Nation: Symbols of Australia, Horizons: The Peopling of Australia since 1788, Eternity: Stories from the Emotional Heart of Australia -tells the personal stories of 50 ordinary and extraordinary Australians, Tangled Destinies: Land and People in Australia.
 
  The museum holds an immense collection which includes different and unique objects. The biggest collection is considered to be the National Historical Collection. It holds more than 200,000 objects representing Australia's history and cultural heritage. Here you can see from samples of rock collected from moon in 1972 to sculptures of swordfish. The National Historical Collection contains one of the world's largest collections of bark paintings and the collection of the former Australian Institute of Anatomy, including the racehorse Phar Lap's heart. The collection also features an assortment of historical vehicles, material related to Australian politics and politicians, over 300 convict tokens, and an extensive collection of Aboriginal breastplates.
The National Museum of Australia is also famous for the largest collection of bark paintings in the world. There is also a huge collection of aboriginal stone tools and indigenous objects.

  Right now, the museum is dealing with repatriation, which means returning ancestral remains and secret and sacred objects to their previous owners. The National Museum of Australia's repatriation team works to return ancestral human remains and secret and sacred objects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The Museum has been returning remains and objects since its inception in 1980 and is recognized nationally and internationally for its repatriation work. More than 1000 individuals and over 360 secret and sacred objects have been unconditionally returned to Indigenous communities.
 

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Maps of The National Museum of Australia