Sexmuseum Amsterdam

Behind its faux-marble facade, this museum isn't as sleazy as you might expect, apart from one room covered with straight-up pornography. Otherwise, presentation tends toward the tongue-in-cheek, and the place seems to be fine with its half-million annual visitors. Exhibits include erotic prints and drawings, and trinkets like tobacco boxes decorated with naughty pictures. Teenage visitors seem to find the whole place vastly amusing, judging by the giggling fits at the showcases. Spare a thought for the models of early erotic photography -- slow film speeds in those days made for uncomfortably long posing times!

Condomerie Het Gulden Vlies

Erotic Museum

As its name suggests, this museum presents an allegedly artistic vision of eroticism; it focuses on prints and drawings, including some by John Lennon. There's a replica of a Red Light District alley, and an extensively equipped S&M playroom, both of which are rather antiseptic and serious. The only humorous note is an X-rated cartoon depicting some of the things Snow White apparently got up to with the Seven Dwarfs that Walt never told us about. Considering all this, it's ironic that the legend on the building's 1685 gable stone reads: God is myn burgh (God is my citadel).

Torture Museum

You enter through a gloomy tunnel, and emerge with a new appreciation of why the framers of the U.S. Constitution outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. Yet one suspects the motives of the Torture Museum -- and its visitors? -- are not purely educational. There's a horrible fascination with devices such as the Inquisition chair, the guillotine, and assorted grotesque implements of torture, punishment, and "redemption" favored by civil and ecclesiastic authorities in times not-so-far gone, if gone at all.

Absolute Danny

Bananenbar