The Hokkaido University Museum
Gothic revival science hall of scratch-tile brick and Sapporo's first reinforced concrete, its atrium ringed with carved reliefs.
This guide to the Hokkaido University Museum in Sapporo starts at the terracotta gothic arches of a building put up in 1929 to house physicists, not fossils. It follows the gamble of building Hokkaido's first reinforced-concrete structure in gothic revival style, and the carved stone reliefs of fruit, sunflower, bat and owl inside the atrium known as the Einstein Dome, said to stand for morning, day, evening and night. You'll hear about the faint, half-legible signature a French potter left behind on most of them. Look up into that shaft of open space before you start reading the cases below.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.