Corning Museum of Glass

Glass turns out to be one of the most extraordinary materials humans have ever worked with, and nowhere makes that case better than Corning. The collection here is the largest of its kind on earth — more than fifty thousand objects tracing three and a half thousand years, from small Roman perfume bottles to contemporary sculptures the size of a room.

The heart of the visit is the Hot Glass Demo, where a gaffer draws a glowing mass from a furnace at over a thousand degrees and shapes it into something recognisable while a narrator explains every move. It is genuinely transfixing, and the demonstrations run all day.

Elsewhere, the Innovation Center covers the science — optics, fibre, heat-resistant glass — through hands-on stations, and studios let you blow an ornament, sculpt a flower or fuse a pendant yourself, taking your own piece home at the end.