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Location
Accessibility
Museum welcomes all people regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or other protected identity
Best time
Buy tickets online ahead of time to save time at entry, and arrive early on weekdays (Wednesday-Sunday before noon) as the parking lot is small and fills up quickly—visitors have reported needing to park down the street
Visitor tip
Start with the Touch & See Lab to engage with interactive fossils and living animals, then head upstairs to see the wildlife dioramas and the wooly mammoth, which visitors consistently identify as the museum's star exhibit
About Bell Museum
Riverside museum with a planetarium. Large museum with diverse animal dioramas & a planetarium also offers educational programs.
Quick Facts
- Type
- Natural History Museum
- Location
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul
- Highlights
- Planetarium shows, wildlife dioramas, Touch & See Lab, outdoor learning landscape
- Membership
- Free unlimited access to galleries and special events
What visitors say
The visit to the planetarium was fun! Really enjoyed the Secrets of the Forest show. The museum is on the small side but a good variety of things to see.
I really enjoyed this museum. There’s an entry fee, so you might want to buy your ticket online ahead of time to save some time. The parking lot is small. When we arrived, there weren’t any spots available, so we had to park a bit down…
Great natural history museum! The exhibits were awesome to see. I especially enjoyed the fossils and collections in the Touch & See Lab and their wildlife dioramas upstairs. I really loved that many exhibits focused on Minnesota's…
From 628 Google reviews
Did You Know?
- The Touch & See Lab features 10,000-year-old fossils alongside living plants and animals, allowing visitors to interact directly with Pleistocene-era specimens
- The museum's wildlife dioramas prominently feature extinct Pleistocene megafauna including a woolly mammoth, which reviewers identified as 'the star of the show'
- The Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium features a domed screen for educational shows including programs like 'Secrets of the Forest' and 'Supervolcanoes'
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