By my reckoning, I visited 105 museums in 2025, mostly art, municipal and social history museums. I also started this newsletter to share stories, ideas, opinions and more inspired by those visits. So, to start 2026, I thought I’d look back at some museum visits and share five random things I learned in 2025.

Chemnitz was a European Capital of Culture in 2025. It was formerly a very industrial city in East Germany, particularly well-known for its stocking industry. At its peak, 600,000 stockings were produced in Chemnitz every day. The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz now has more than 5,000 historic stockings in its collections, as well as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1926 industrial landscape painting Chemnitz Factories. Kirchner lived in the town between 1890 and 1901. ➡️from Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz

Irish writer James Joyce moved to Trieste in 1904, just 22 years old, unknown and in search of a job. However, he wasn't the first 'J. Joyce' to have lived there. In 1850, a traveller of that name published a book in Trieste called Recollection of the Salzkammergut, Ischl, Salzburg, Bad Gastein with a Sketch of Trieste. When Joyce moved there 50 years later, the local newspapers were not sure how to spell his name, publishing it as: James Joice, James Zois, James Yoyce and Zanus Joyce. ➡️ from LETS Literature Museum Trieste

The first photobooth appeared in 1925 when Anatol Josepho invented and patented it. The 'Photomaton' was located on Broadway, where sitters could pay 25 cents to receive a strip of 8 photographs within a few minutes. A few years later, Josepho had sold the rights to the machine, and soon booths were appearing across the US, Canada and Europe. The first photobooth in the UK opened in Selfridge's in London in 1928. ➡️ from The Photographers Gallery

Germany was the first country to have its women's and men's teams reach the football final in the Olympics. In the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, the women's team won the gold medal against Sweden, while the men's team won silver having been defeated by Brazil. ➡️ from German Football Museum

A door that was then nearly 400 years old was exhibited at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. It dates from 1515 and guards the sacristy of the fortified church in Biertan in Romania. Now more than 500 years old, and still in situ, the door has a beautiful and complex lock, which has a 19-point closing mechanism. It's made of thick oak boards by the craftsman Johannes Reichmuth. ➡️ from Biertan fortified church (not actually a museum, but as good as)

Thank you for reading + until next time,