Fodor's Expert Review Western Reserve Historical Society Museum

This museum, housed in two Italian Renaissance–style mansions, is considered Cleveland's oldest cultural institution. It chronicles the history of the Western Reserve, a tract of land on the south shore of Lake Erie in northeast Ohio, and houses a library and a top-notch auto and aviation collection.

You can see how the rich—and their servants—lived at the History Museum. The museum includes the Chisholm Halle Costume Wing, one of the nation's top-ranked collections, with garments from the late 1700s to the present. Guided tours of the Hay-McKinney Mansion are given every day between noon and 5.

Car Collectors magazine has called the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum one of the top 10 collections in the nation. Nearly 200 antique, vintage, and classic automobiles, from Model T's and the first enclosed automobile to late-model Jaguars, are on display. There are models dating to 1895, when Cleveland was a center of car manufacturing. The aviation collection includes a 1912 Curtiss Hydroaeroplane.

One admission ticket covers all three museums at the complex.