Bell Museum

The Bell Museum and Planetarium is an excellent place to spend a few hours of informative and fun entertainment. The planetarium is quite a unique and visually appealing educational experience. They have multiple different themed shows playing throughout the day. The museum isn't huge, but the second floor has an amazing and vast Natural History exhibition featuring very well done nature dioramas and features tons of great animal artifacts and taxidermy of Minnesota's wildlife. They have a good exhibit on space and astronomy as well. The museum is reasonably priced.

Amazing museum in the Twin cities, the planetarium shows are amazing, the touch and see lab is very helpful for kids and adults to learn about science and animals! upstairs there are so many interesting things to see and learn! I highly recommend this place for the family and friends! 100%

Awesome place, friendly staff, knowledgeable , super clean place. I just wish I had more time to check out the entire place, I also loved that they do live petting of a snake there

This museum caught my eye on a drive-by due to its naturalized landscaping and outdoor sculptures, and I planned a return visit. So glad I did! This is not a large museum, but every exhibit is well designed and informative. Lots of interactive exhibits for children and adults. My good fortune that I visited when their temporary bird exhibit was on display, which was excellent.
A great way to spend an afternoon, and a must-visit for families with young children.

An extremely beautiful facility with tons of amazing specimens! The planetarium was super cool and the touch and see lab was also a neat experience. The gift shop has very reasonably priced snacks and not all of them are total junk food either! Great place for all ages.

Delightful, informative natural history museum. I especially enjoyed the permanent "Journey to Minnesota" exhibit featuring how the state's geological formations developed starting withe the Big Bang, with life-sized dioramas of the state's native flora and fauna in their natural habitat.

I also enjoyed relaxing in the pond habitat just outside the building.

Has an "Touch and Feel" Room that kids AND adults would enjoy. I got to pet an eyelash lizard! 🙂

Relaxed viewing, not at all crowded even on a Sunday afternoon.

My kids were recently there on a field trip. Our vet notified us that our dog, who had been hospitalized, was dying. I pulled my kids out of the field trip so they could say their goodbyes. A museum employee stopped me on the way out and gave our family passes to come back. And we did, the very next day. It was something we all looked forward to as a way of being together while we grieved. The planetarium show gave us needed perspective about life beyond our planet, and how precious it is. Thank you!

Always enjoy the Bell museum. It starts with the formation of the solar system and covers up to Minnesota's native fish.

This was a great natural history museum! Very few people when we went on a weekday. Lots of interactive exhibits that appeal to many different learners.

I used the audio guide on the website. I wish there was more of a full fledged audio tour, but it was still nice. I really loved the mammoth, the interactive phylogenetic tree, and the dioramas.

The dioramas are from the 40s and still look incredible! The artistry of them is absolutely beautiful, and I spent a lot of time trying to find all the little nooks of each one.

The museum was kind of small, but the price was valuable. Really gorgeous facility. Easy to get to by bus as well.

Fun 2 hour museum + omni theater show. 8, 10, and 12 year old kids all left with a smile on their faces and said "That was really fun" when we got in the car to go home.

I was impressed with this location find.

Loved it. Went with a middle school group. The new building is beautiful. It is made up of 4 parts, the exhibit galleries, the planetarium, touch and see room and learning landscapes which is the outdoor area. The galleries include the old dioramas which are still beautifully preserved and cool things like the wooly mammoth and space exploration areas. The displays are informative and interactive. The planetarium has a unique, seamless dome which allows you to suspend disbelief and really feel like you are seeing into space. Things to do with any age kid. Lots of admission/membership options. Fun to go year round.

The new Bell Museum in St. Paul is beautiful and impressive! The museum is spacious, aesthetically pleasing, and has very interesting exhibits. It is an amazing place for space, natural history, and zoology buffs. We will definitely come back to see it again!

Excellent museum. The ambience is so nice and quiet!! There is a planetarium inside the building. Both are very good! The kids will love the place. If you want to know more about planets, animals, birds and plants, it's a great place to visit indeed :)

Lots of dioramas and interactive displays make this very fun especially for children. The movies in the planetarium are an amazing experience. There's a few shorter movies throughout, just ask a staff member and they can point you in the right direction.

We spent 2+hours here and that's even skimming some things because we were getting hungry. I think this is the most detailed dioramas that we've seen - very impressive. It was interesting to see the process of how some of them were created from initial drawing as well. Would highly recommend this place!

I’m not even lying I think this is the best museum I’ve been to. As an extreme animal lover, this place was heaven. The staff were really sweet and answered questions. The planetarium and employees in there was great too. Literally come here I’m begging, it’s so good!!!

It was a fun and learned lot of things. Highly recommended for kids that having interest in the space, nature and animals.

Not enormous, but a fantastic natural history museum and a great place to spend a few hours The dioramas are truly breathtaking, even if you have been to many more "prestigious" natural history museums. Bring your own food, since the offerings in the gift shop were very disappointing.

Great museum for all ages! My kids loved the planetarium & we did too! Cool place!!
We bought tickets in advance online, we didn't know you needed to reserve parking, so my husband had to drop us off and park 2 blocks away.