Lumina Domestica

This guide to Lumina Domestica in Bruges opens with a lanternfish glowing in a case, a creature that solved light without flame or fuel long before humans existed. Inside this fifteenth-century merchant's house you'll walk, room by room, through humanity's attempts to catch up: hollow stones and grease lamps, then oil, wax and paraffin, each generation buying a little more time against the dark. Midway through, the story pauses on a case of glow-worms, lantern fish and a candlelit Chinese paper lantern, the closest people ever got to that first trick. Stand a moment with the fish before moving on to the museum's later rooms.