The Museum of Money in Dallas, Texas

In downtown Dallas at 501 Elm Street, a few steps from Dealey Plaza, sits a two-story museum dedicated to money. Not the kind of museum where currency lives behind glass. Visitors here are handed a route through 28 exhibits and told to touch everything. Some of it is pure spectacle. There is a booth where dollar bills shower down on whoever steps inside. There is a vault visitors can attempt to break into by dodging a laser grid. There is an 80s investment banker who reads guests' financial futures with great confidence and questionable accuracy. Other exhibits are quieter and more curious. One small room asks visitors to barter their way to what they need without any money at all. Most adults give up within a couple of minutes and rediscover why people invented currency. Another lines a wall with real and counterfeit bills and asks visitors to pick out the fakes. A third tells the story of Mademoiselle Zélie, a 19th-century French singer who was paid for a Pacific island tour in livestock and produce: three pigs, twenty-three turkeys, five thousand coconuts, and fifteen hundred oranges, among other things. Tucked between the photo ops are panels on the real history of money. Bronze knife-shaped and spade-shaped Chinese coins from 2,700 years ago. The story of Y'all Street, the Texas stock exchange opening in Dallas. Why gold became valuable in the first place (it doesn't rust, it's rare, and it's easy to shape). The space rewards curiosity at any age. Children come for the cash shower. Adults stay for the bartering room.