GÄUBODENMUSEUM Straubing

Description

As a central regional museum in Straubing, the Gäubodenmuseum presents the cultural history of the city and the Gäuboden landscape from prehistoric times to the late Middle Ages and beyond. It displays both permanent collections and rotating special exhibitions on archaeology and regional history, most recently on the Roman harbor settlement of Straubing and on Danube navigation in antiquity.

The roots of the collection go back to the 19th century; it began in 1845 with the consolidation of items no longer needed from the municipal armory. At the end of the 19th century the town tower was used as an exhibition venue, and with the founding of a local historical society the collection received new impetus. Due to lack of space it moved to larger premises in 1908; in 1938 the museum received its present name. Additional space was acquired in 1976, so that today around 2,500 m² of exhibition space are available. Until 1982 the institution was managed on a voluntary basis by the chairman of the historical society.

The permanent exhibitions are arranged thematically and chronologically. The prehistoric department, opened in 1985 and supplemented by numerous new finds in 2013, presents in nine rooms the development from Neolithic farmers through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, including the Urnfield, Hallstatt and La Tène periods in the Gäuboden. A particular highlight is the Roman hoard: in 1950 a copper cauldron was found during construction work containing a depository find of parade armor and bronze face-helmets, presumably buried in the 3rd century to protect them from looting.

The Roman section is one of the largest in Bavaria and addresses Sorviodurum (Straubing) with its military installations, the Danube harbor and the civilian settlement. Military and civilian finds are on display, as well as a reconstruction of the town in the mid-2nd century AD, wall paintings and burial complexes from the Imperial period. After destructions in the second half of the 3rd century the military presence shifted, and for the 4th and 5th centuries the exhibition points to a late-antique fort on the present-day church hill of St. Peter.

Since September 2018 an interactive section has been devoted to the early history of Bavaria, based on around 1,500 grave inventories from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Film and exhibition stations illuminate the transitions from Late Antiquity through Ostrogothic and Frankish rule to the Bavarians’ relations with the Lombards in Friuli, as well as the development of Straubing’s old town from the 5th to the 12th century.