Not far from the Museum of Sex Machines was the Museum of Torture. En route we pass through the same square we’d passed through the day prior with dudes in animal costumes, being a Saturday the place was packed so we found a couple of seats and got some Backlash beers on the go to people watch. Watching people making the same selfie pose repeatedly, just slightly adjusting their hair or smile or the angle of their phone, very entertaining.

And just around the corner…

We walk down some narrow stairs into the darkened torture museum. Looped audio of screams are played somewhere further ahead. We’re introduced to medieval entertainment gradually through illustration:

Badass. There are descriptions about which crimes demanded the use of what kind of torture. One was a “pear” – a set of compact iron spikes that could be screwed open to “irremediably” damage an orifice into which it was inserted. If you spoke provocatively, it went in your mouth. If you were an adulterous woman, into your vagina. If you were a sodomite, into your butt’s hole it would go.

There were various crushing devices – for shins, hands, thumbs, whatever. One was named the “thumbcrusher”. Pretty much all of them would make sweet metal band names.

“Holy shit dude, Mask of Infamy is opening up for the Knuckle Crushers this Thursday!”

Around the corner we found the source of the screams we’d heard earlier – a mock-up of a witch burning:

Some more clamps and illustrations followed:

Medievals were so fucking metal. Speaking of metal, we found a variation on the Iron Maiden with a horrific face on top – the “Virgin of Nuremberg”:

This chair speaks for itself:

This necklace was at the end of a long pole and used to control the movements of an “often naked” prisoner:

There were also a series of wax museum-style characters in various forms of distress:

Sooo creeeeepy

“Oh bother”

This “torture” was for “bakers and butchers”. The notes didn’t say what these butchers or bakers had done to deserve it, but as far as we could tell the punishment just consisted of being hoisted up in a basket:

The finale was a guillotine, but it’s hard to even consider it as an instrument of torture compared to the rest of these:

Well that was metal as fuck. Let’s get some drinks.