THE CLEMENTE MUSEUM | PHOTO BY ROB LARSON/CLEMENTE MUSEUM

Pittsburgh punches above its weight when it comes to museums.

Institutions including The Andy Warhol Museum and the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History have gained international fame — but they’re far from the only spots for visitors and locals alike to learn and explore.

In fact, some of the city’s most fun exhibits and institutions are so unheralded that even lifelong yinzers may not realize they exist. Here are 10 Pittsburgh museums that visitors and locals alike should keep on their radar.

Pittsburgh Tattoo Art Museum

5413a Walnut St., Shadyside

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

A one-room museum in the heart of Shadyside serves as an ode to the history and art of tattooing. Tattoo artist and collector Nick Ackman has spent decades amassing an extensive collection of tattoo memorabilia and antiques — a collection that has grown so big that only about 10% of it can fit in the Pittsburgh Tattoo Art Museum.

It may be time for a bigger home. Tattoos, after all, have a long history. Ackman, who founded the museum in 2022, has carefully curated the items on display, including many of the rarest and oldest items in his collection. One highlight is a set of personal sketches from early 20th-century tattoo artist Lew Alberts, a highly influential figure in American tattooing who contributed to the design of motorized tattoo guns used today. It is one of only two known sets of Alberts’ drawings still extant (the other belonging to tattoo artist and entrepreneur Ed Hardy).

Stencils and sketches from other well-known figures in tattooing history make up much of the collection. Most are from the early 20th century, and are accompanied by signs and photographs that provide context on the artists and their role in American tattoo culture.

There are several antique tattoo guns on display; they date back to the 1890s, not long after the electric tattoo machine was invented. Among them is a traveling kit used by carnival tattooists made from a repurposed, hollowed-out record player. Visitors who like the vintage designs on display won’t have to go far to get one inked. The Pittsburgh Tattoo Art Museum also is a working tattoo shop, with four resident artists.

When he’s not tattooing, Ackman can usually be found sketching in the back of the museum. He’s happy to answer questions, give background on items in his collection or just geek out about the art he loves.

Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Admission: Free

Bicycle Heaven

1800 Preble Ave. Chateau

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Want to see the bike Pee-wee Herman rode in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure?” Or the four-person tandem bike ridden by the Monkees? Both are on display at Bicycle Heaven, alongside thousands more.

This combination museum and bike shop is incongruously located in Casey Industrial Park in Pittsburgh’s North Side. Bicycle Heaven is the world’s largest museum dedicated to bicycles. It started as the personal collection of bicycle aficionado and repairman Craig Morrow, who collected antique bikes while running a repair shop in nearby Bellevue.

He upgraded in 2011 to the North Side space, where today he showcases roughly 3,500 of the more than 27,000 bicycles in his collection.  Bicycle Heaven regularly provides props for movie and TV productions; bikes used in films including “Super 8” and “Fences” are among those on display.

The collection also features bikes dating back to the 1800s, including several penny farthings and an all-wooden bicycle made before the Civil War. The rarest bikes in the collection are four colors of Bowden Spacelander, a fiberglass bicycle made in 1946. (Morrow owns 19 of the estimated 38 remaining in the world.) Visitors can also see pedal-free bikes powered by bouncing on the seat and a chunk of a tree with two bicycles partially encased within it.

While Bicycle Heaven’s famous and rare bikes are the main draw, they’re not the only items in the collection. Several were donated to honor their former owners. Signs posted on these bikes explain their significance, from treasured childhood possessions to bikes used to win races and souped-up models used for stunts.

Another detail setting Bicycle Heaven apart from other museums: If guests like something they see, they might be able to take it home. They sell used, new, and collectible bikes both in-store and on their website. Others can be rented for visitors who want to ride around the city, something Morrow says happens on a near-daily basis. It’s also still an active bike repair shop, with a million or more spare parts interspersed among the complete cycles in the collection.

Hours: Daily, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Admission: Adults $15; groups of 5+ $10 each; kids under 9 free

Johnny Angel’s Ginchy Stuff

1800 Preble Ave., Chateau

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Anyone visiting Bicycle Heaven on the weekend should allow time to also visit its next-door neighbor: Johnny Angel’s Ginchy Stuff. This museum and collectibles shop is a must-visit for music lovers, particularly those with an interest in those golden oldies — and vintage records.

Founder Jack Hunt (better known by his stage name, Johnny Angel) is a lifelong yinzer who grew up in the Woods Run area of the North Side, not far from where his museum is located. His first band, the Cordells, released their debut record in 1966, evolving into the better-known Johnny Angel and the Halos in the 1970s. From then on, they were a fixture of the music scene until 2024, when Hunt was sidelined by a stroke.

During his more than 50-year-long music career, Hunt shared a stage with James Brown, Chuck Berry and the Four Tops. Along the way, he amassed the collection of records, autographs, outfits, instruments and other memorabilia that has been displayed in his shop since it opened in 2016.

Visitors first encounter the museum’s record shop, which has an extensive array of hard-to-find and vintage vinyl for collectors to peruse and purchase. The rear space of the shop is a kind of rock and roll thrift store, selling an eclectic mix of books, collectibles, clothes and art.

To tour the museum itself, just head through the beaded curtain. From there, you’ll explore several rooms of exhibits spanning musical eras and genres. There are an autographed drumhead from the Yardbirds, a game of Chubby Checker Twister, a vintage Green Book, colorful suits worn by soul groups like the Temptations and the Flamingos — and, naturally, an array of Johnny Angel and the Halos gear from their performing years.

Visitors with questions about items in the museum can often get the answer straight from Hunt. He’s usually the one behind the counter and is happy to chat, whether it’s about his music career, his internet radio show (the “Heavenly Soul Show”) or a rare record that a museum guest has been trying to track down.

Hours: Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Admission: Free

Moonshot Museum

1016 N. Lincoln Ave., Chateau

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Space lovers of all ages will have out-of-this-world fun at the Moonshot Museum. This edutainment destination opened in October 2022, making it one of Pittsburgh’s newest museums. Operated by the Astrobotic Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Astrobotic Technology, it also holds the distinction of being the first space museum in Pennsylvania.

The highly interactive museum’s exhibits pack a great deal of hands-on learning into a compact space, giving visitors an immersive introduction to 21st-century space exploration — not just the math and engineering elements of space travel.

Visitors start their tour in the Moonshot Theater for an introduction to the modern space industry and a look at the role Astrobotic and Pittsburgh play in it. With this background in mind, you’ll launch your own simulated lunar mission: Build a lunar rover in The Lab and then head to the moon’s surface to identify potential human settlement sites and learn what it takes to survive in an alien environment. You can design a mission patch, too — and even swing by the Hope Moonshot exhibit to send a future message to the Moon, to one day be carried aboard one of Astrobotic’s lunar missions.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the Moonshot is that it also houses Astrobotic’s workshop, where the robotics company builds real lunar landers and rovers for NASA space missions. Visitors get a literal window into the work in progress in Astrobotic’s Clean Room, where they’re building the Griffin-1 Lander. Scheduled to launch in late 2025, Griffin-1 will carry Astrobotic’s FLIP rover to the Moon’s South Pole, along with dropping off payloads for NASA and the European Space Agency.

Once construction is completed, the Griffin-1 will pass through the Moonshot Museum on its way to the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. Upcoming events will be announced on Astrobotic’s and Moonshot’s social media accounts, for visitors who want to see if their visit coincides with a launch or landing. The museum team plans to continue updating its exhibits to match the current work of the Astrobotic team, so repeat visitors will learn and see something new each time they stop in.

Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Admission: Adults $12; children 3-12 $7; kids under 2 free

St. Anthony Chapel

1700 Harpster St., Troy Hill

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

You might be surprised to learn that Troy Hill holds the largest collection of Catholic relics in the United States. In fact, the more than 5,000 relics at St. Anthony Chapel make up the biggest collection of its kind outside of Vatican City.

St. Anthony Chapel’s nondescript, tan-brick facade belies its ornate interior, which features painted ceilings and a gilded apse reminiscent of the grand cathedrals of Europe. The chapel was founded by the Rev. Suitbert G. Mollinger, the first pastor of the Most Holy Name of Jesus Parish, specifically to house his relic collection. Born into a wealthy Belgian family, he aimed to recreate the elegant churches of his homeland through the chapel’s design and decor. Much of the art, like the life-sized wooden statues for the Stations of the Cross and the stained-glass windows depicting the Virgin Mary and the saints, was imported from Europe.

The shrine opened on the Feast of St. Anthony in 1883 and was designated a Historic Landmark in 1977. It’s dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua, whose tooth is among the relics housed at the site, found in a small reliquary on the St. Anthony altar. All told, there are more than 800 reliquaries throughout the chapel, many of which contain multiple artifacts.

The collection also includes 525 certificates attesting to the relics’ authenticity. Many of these documents are historic artifacts in their own right, with the oldest dating back to 1716. Other highlights of the collection include the entire skeletal remains of martyr St. Demetrius, relics purported to be from Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist and the skulls of martyrs St. Theodore, St. Macharius and St. Stephana.

Visitors can tour St. Anthony Chapel every afternoon (except on Friday). It is also an active house of worship, with Sunday and weekday-morning masses, Novenas to St. Anthony on Tuesdays and Stations of the Cross on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons during Lent.

Hours: Saturday-Thursday, noon-3 p.m.
Admission: Free

Clemente Museum

3339 Penn Ave., Lawrenceville

PHOTO BY ROB LARSON/CLEMENTE MUSEUM

A few athletes have earned the nickname “The Great One.” But in Pittsburgh (and Puerto Rico), this title is reserved for one legend: Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente, the only athlete in the city to be honored with his own museum.

During his 18 years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente won 12 consecutive Golden Glove awards, played in 12 All-Star Games and was the first major league player from the Caribbean to be named MVP of both the National League (1966) and the World Series (1971) — among many other accolades. His on-field accomplishments were significant enough that the National Baseball Hall of Fame changed their rules after his untimely death to make him eligible for an immediate, posthumous induction in 1973.

Clemente left as profound a legacy off the field as he did on the diamond. Born in Puerto Rico, he devoted his offseasons to charity work in Latin America and the Caribbean. This dedication ultimately led to his death, when his plane crashed on his way to deliver aid to victims of the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake. He was 38. Major League Baseball renamed their award for sportsmanship from the Commissioner’s Award to the Roberto Clemente Award in his honor.

The Roberto Clemente Museum celebrates both his incredible baseball career and his humanitarian efforts. The museum was founded in 2007 by photographer Duane Rieder, whose personal collection of memorabilia served as the foundation for the museum, supplemented by photos and artifacts donated by Clemente’s family.

Today, the collection includes thousands of items ranging from professional sports photographs and family snapshots to old uniforms and equipment — even seats from Forbes Field, where he played most of his career. The museum carries on his legacy of charitable giving, too. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, it organized relief efforts that raised more than $50,000 and gathered two tractor-trailers full of supplies.

While the Clemente Museum doesn’t offer walk-in hours, visitors can book a docent-led tour on the museum’s website. Tours typically last 90 minutes; available slots are posted a month in advance. The team also offers open-house tours during Pirates home games.

Hours: Scheduled tours are typically available 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday-Sunday and select weekdays
Admission: $21/person

Center for PostNatural History

4913 Penn Ave., Suite 101, Garfield

PHOTO BY RICH PELL/CENTER FOR POSTNATURAL HISTORY

Chickens, dogs and food crops have quite a backstory. Visitors can discover that tale at the Center for PostNatural History, a museum designed to explore the complex relationship between nature, culture and technology — with a collection of plants, animals and other organisms that have been intentionally altered by humans.

Tucked between storefronts along Penn Avenue in Garfield, the Center offers a refocused take on the traditional natural history museum. The timeline of the collection starts some 15,000 years ago with the domestication of dogs and runs through high-tech concepts like genetic engineering. In between, it covers everything from cultivated crops to lab mice to birds trained to imitate humans.

Museum visitors are greeted by the taxidermied remains of Freckles, a BioSteel goat who was modified to produce spider silk proteins in her milk. Other exhibits run the gamut from the familiar to the bizarre: fluorescent mice and GloFish; Sea Monkeys, representing the first time animals were bred explicitly as a toy; and HeLa cells, the immortal human cell line derived from Henrietta Lacks, just to name a few.

The center was founded in 2008 by Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Pell, with the aim of studying how humans have shaped the evolution of the natural world. He opened the museum in 2012 to fill what he saw as a conspicuous gap in existing collections. As he explained in a 2024 interview with NPR, natural history museums tend to ignore modified organisms, despite their prevalence in everyday life. He set out to create a space where these altered life forms, and their role in human culture and development, could be given the consideration they’re due.

The Center for PostNatural History has garnered international acclaim as the first collection with this focus. Its exhibits have toured cities in Germany, France, Australia and Singapore. Its website offers an extensive archive of current and past exhibits; the center also released a book in 2024, “This is Not An Artifact,” which catalogs the first 16 years of investigation into PostNatural History (and comes with fun 3D glasses).

Hours: Friday 5-9 p.m.; Saturday noon-9 p.m.; Sunday noon-4 p.m.
Admission: Adults $10; students and kids under 8 $5

Bayernhof Museum

225 St. Charles Place, O’Hara

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

At most cultural institutions, the draw is either the place itself or the treasures it contains. At the Bayernhof Museum, it’s both. Along with more than 150 automated music machines, this sprawling 19,000-square-foot mansion boasts 10 fireplaces, 13 wet bars, 3 kitchens, separate gambling and billiards rooms, a rooftop observatory, a 10-foot waterfall — and spectacular views of Highland Park and the Allegheny River.

The Bayernhof Museum was originally the private residence of eccentric Gas-Lite Manufacturing Co. founder Charles Brown III (Chuck to his friends). Its construction cost $4.2 million and took six years, in part because his crew consisted of, as he would say, “three kids, two old men and a blue station wagon” under the oversight of an engineer who was still a teenager at the project’s start. This unconventional approach resulted in a labyrinthian layout featuring elements straight out of “Clue,” such as secret staircases hidden behind Murphy doors.

Brown’s intent with his mansion was to bring a slice of Bavaria to Pittsburgh. The name Bayernhof loosely translates to “Bavarian Hall,” and the decor largely matches this moniker; many of the moldings, fixtures and furnishings were bought from castles in Germany. Brown also liked his modern conveniences, though, installing features that were high-tech for the ’80s and ’90s and are now charmingly retro, making the home a historic artifact spanning multiple eras.

The Bayernhof’s music machine collection started from Brown’s interest in old music boxes. This evolved into buying larger and more intricate music machines, primarily antiques that are more than a century old — and, in some cases, are one of a kind. Highlights include a Wurlitzer Automatic Harp, a Rivenc Bird Music Box whose animatronic bird “sings” along with the music and a Hupfelt Phonoliszt Violina, which plays three violins and a piano all at once. Not all of these machines are stand-alone; the home theater has an early 20th-century player piano that also creates sound effects to go along with silent movies.

Tours of the Bayernhof are offered every day, except major holidays (although tours can fill up on busy weekends) and must be scheduled in advance. The tour is an audio as well as a visual experience, including demonstrations of several music machines as well as entertaining stories about Brown, the home’s construction and the history of many of the artifacts that call the Bayernhof home.

The Bost Building

623 E. 8th ave. Homestead

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

The Bost Building is best known for its role in the Homestead Strike, one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of American organized labor. The interior of this intended rooming house for workers of the nearby Homestead Steel Works was still under construction in 1892, when the strike started on July 1. Despite this, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers Union used the building as its headquarters during the 95-day strike, putting it at the center of the strike’s two most memorable incidents: the July 6 battle between striking workers and Pinkerton agents and the attempt to assassinate plant operator Henry Clay Frick two weeks later.

In the years that followed, the Bost Building briefly served its intended purpose as a hotel, though not a particularly successful one. It also functioned as a bar, grocery store, gambling hall, brothel and sandwich shop before being designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999. It reopened in 2002 as the headquarters for Rivers of Steel, an organization that preserves the industrial and cultural heritage of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Today, the Bost Building serves as the Visitor’s Center for the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area. Along with staff offices and historical archives, it houses a museum displaying collections of photographs, artifacts, documents and art related to U.S. labor and the Pennsylvania steel industry. The museum’s permanent exhibits focus on the Homestead Steel Works, the Homestead Strike and the restoration of the Bost Building. Two rooms have been restored to their 1892 appearance, while the third floor hosts rotating art and archival exhibits.

The Bost Building is just one attraction in the greater Rivers of Steel site. Visitors with an interest in Pittsburgh’s industrial history can visit the Pump House in Munhall that was the site of the 1892 Battle of Homestead or explore the Carrie Blast Furnaces in Swissvale, the only non-operative blast furnaces remaining after the collapse of Big Steel in Western Pennsylvania.

For those who want more hands-on entertainment, Rivers of Steel also hosts festivals and workshops. These include metal arts classes like blacksmithing, iron-casting and their popular Doodle Bowl Experience (designing and carving a bowl that is cast in solid aluminum). They also lead photo safaris and hands-on graffiti tours of the grounds.

Hours: Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; timed tickets required
Admission: $5/person

Living Dead Museum

Monroeville Mall, 248 Mall Circle Drive

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Pittsburgh claims the “Zombie Capital of the World” moniker, thanks to filmmaker and Carnegie Mellon University alum George A. Romero. Romero filmed several installments of his “Night of the Living Dead” series in the region; those films defined zombies in pop culture for the half-century that followed (and launched the career of special-effects guru and Bloomfield native Tom Savini).

Monroeville Mall was the primary filming location for 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” so it’s fitting that it’s now home to a museum honoring zombies in film. Visitors can see original props, costumes and set pieces from Romero’s films alongside photos from the production, movie memorabilia and the “Maul of Fame,” a wall of bloody handprints left by horror actors who have visited the exhibit.

Romero’s films aren’t the only terrors celebrated at the Living Dead Museum. It also has exhibits dedicated to other pop-culture zombies, including the cabin set used in “Evil Dead 2” and a statue of Michael Jackson in his full “Thriller” get-up. Other productions filmed in Monroeville Mall have space in the museum, too, such as a room devoted to the 2017 Netflix series “Mindhunter.”

The Living Dead Museum began life as a small display in curator Kevin Kriess’ Monroeville Mall toy shop. It moved in 2013 to Evans City, where Romero filmed the original “Night of the Living Dead” and his 1973 film “The Crazies,” before returning to an expanded space in the mall in 2018. Although the museum no longer calls Evans City home, the town is still worth a side trip for serious zombie lovers, who can see plaques and a mural dedicated to Romero as well as several locations featured in the movie — including the cemetery where the iconic opening scene was filmed.

While the Living Dead museum is open for walk-in visitors year-round, their hours are extended during the summer months. Monroeville Mall also regularly hosts festivals and events related to its spooky claim to fame, most notably the Living Dead Weekend every summer (it was held in early June this year); the macabre gathering features cast reunions, movie screenings and other undead-themed entertainment.

Hours: Monday, Thursday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sunday noon-6 p.m.
Admission: Adults $8; students and active military $7; kids 12 and under free

Jess Simms came to Pittsburgh for an MFA from Chatham University and loved the city so much they never left. They write about the region’s culture and creative scene and participate in it as co-founder of Scribble House and Managing Editor of After Happy Hour Review.