City: Fort Worth, TX

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (817) 255-9300

Address: 1600 Gendy St.

Description: Replacing a humble, 50-year-old museum long outgrown, the new and grand Fort Worth Museum of Science and History was unveiled in late 2009. The utterly overhauled favorite measures 166,000 square feet in multiple levels of space; all that remains of the original version is the Omni Theater, where IMAX films have brought visitors in drove on a daily basis for years. The museum’s dramatic new design, a contemporary complex of massive, colorful square shapes, comes from the Mexican architect Legorreta + Legorreta. Magnificent new spaces house the revered Museum School; DinoLabs and DinoDig; Energy Blast!; an interactive gallery for younger visitors called Children’s Museum; a cluster of five learning spaces for tweens, teens, and adults called Innovation Studios; a cafe called Stars; the Fort Worth History Gallery; the Cattle Raisers Museum; Noble Planetarium; and the museum store called Too! Perhaps most impressive are the main courtyard, shaded by a giant live oak with sitting areas, and the Urban Lantern, a 76-foot-high structure made of nearly 100 500-pound glass panels, that functions as the museum entrance.