Kultur- und Stadthistorisches Museum

Description

In the heart of Duisburg’s old town, the Kultur- und Stadthistorische Museum shapes the city’s historical and cultural offering. The municipal museum presents local history, significant scholarly holdings and special exhibitions, and shares its location with the city archive in the renovated Innenhafen ensemble.

The roots of the collection go back to the 19th century; its formal beginnings were the “Commission zur Erhaltung und Sammlung von Duisburger Alterthümern,” founded in 1896, and the transfer of the holdings to the town hall in 1902. Over the decades the institution changed several times, at times appearing under the names Averdunk-Museum, Niederrheinisches Heimatmuseum and Niederrheinisches Museum, and it systematically collected objects relating to urban history, archaeology and cartography. The museum gained a permanent home in 1991 when it moved into the converted wheat silo of the former Rosiny-Mühle in the Innenhafen.

The permanent exhibitions are organized around three focal points. City history concentrates in particular on archaeological finds from the Paleolithic to the modern era and documents Duisburg’s development as a settlement and industrial site. The Mercator-Schatzkammer houses one of the most important collections on the life and work of the cartographer Gerhard Mercator, including two historical globes from the 16th century as well as numerous maps, atlases and prints. Since 2024 the exhibition “Cash! Eine Geschichte des Geldes” has complemented the displays; it presents objects from the Sammlung Köhler-Osbahr, including around 50,000 coins, antiquities, jewelry and an extensive library that traces the history of means of payment from pre-monetary forms to modern coinage.

The museum complex occupies former harbour and warehouse buildings. In the surrounding area preserved industrial heritage relics and remnants of the city wall point to Duisburg’s economic history. In addition, the building houses a Centre for Remembrance Culture, Human Rights and Democracy, which, in cooperation with the museum, engages with the National Socialist past and with questions of diversity and democratic education.