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Jewish Museum

Why It's Cool: Despite an understandably grim Holocaust focus, the Jewish Museum Berlin's 2001 addition has the logic of a carnival fun house. There are twisting halls, angled floors, and rooms whose windows are diagonal slits. Outside in the “Garden of Exile,” 49 olive-tree-topped columns tilt 12 degrees sideways by the addition's sharply pointed walls, which from above suggest pieces of a Star of David. Disorientation is the desired effect, according to Libeskind, to echo what World War II-era Jews felt before being shipped to death camps.

How to Visit: Open daily at 10 a.m.; admission is $6 for adults

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From Travel + Leisure , FEB 2009

Despite an understandably grim Holocaust focus...MORE>>

– C. J. Hughes World’s Coolest Buildings

Last updated February 2009