Baltimore’s other great art promise sits in Mount Vernon: the Walters Art Museum, where admission has been free since 2006 and the collection spans 7,000 years — Egyptian mummies and Greek gold, medieval armor and illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance painting and Fabergé eggs.
Founded on the collection of railroad magnate William T. Walters and his son Henry, the museum unfolds across three connected buildings at 600 North Charles Street: the 1909 palazzo-style main building, the 1974 Centre Street building and the Hackerman House, a Greek Revival mansion at One West Mount Vernon Place whose rooms recreate the 19th-century world the collection came from. Henry Walters stipulated the museum be ‘for the benefit of the public’ — and it is, five days a week, free.
The Walters is open Wednesday through Sunday. Current exhibitions and programs are at thewalters.org — leave time for the Chamber of Wonders, the cabinet-of-curiosities room everyone remembers.
