D.C.’s newest museum is an illusion. Actually, it is dozens of them. The Museum of Illusions will open Dec. 13 at CityCenterDC by the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro. The museum has more than 50 exhibits, many of them intended to be Instragramable, and some of them pay tribute to D.C. The Reverse Room is an illusion that makes it seem you can hang upside down from a Metrorail car’s ceiling. There is a mosaic of Capitol Hill.
Other exhibits include the Ames Room, where guests appear to grow and shrink as they walk from one corner of the room to the next, and the Vortex Tunnel, that tricks your mind and body into thinking and feeling like the ground beneath is moving. The for-profit museum admission price is $23.95. It is part of a rapidly growing chain.
The first opened in Zagreb, Croatia in 2015. There are now 40 locations, including New York, Chicago, Paris, Madrid, Shanghai and Toronto. The Museum of Illusions joins roughly 40, mostly-upscale, retailers at CityCenterDC, as well as several restaurants.