Welcome to the Museum of Pre- and Ancient History,
part of the Thuringian State Archaeological Museum

Discover Archaeological Treasures from 400,000 Years of Thuringian History!

Unique and ori­ginal finds, fas­cin­at­ing mod­els, life-size recon­struc­tions, and mul­ti­me­dia install­a­tions will take you on a jour­ney through the his­tory of Thuringia.

Mater­ial cul­ture, tech­no­logy, build­ing tech­niques, art, and, not least, people them­selves, are the focus of the museum’s per­man­ent exhib­i­tion.  Always on the cut­ting edge of the most recent find­ings from archae­olo­gical excav­a­tions and research, the Museum of Pre- and Ancient His­tory graph­ic­ally and inform­at­ively con­veys the his­tory of set­tle­ment along with the eco­nomic and social his­tor­ies of the region. His­tory is made com­pre­hens­ible and tan­gible: from the dawn of human­ity, through the Stone Age and sub­sequent cul­tures, and into the Middle Ages.

The per­man­ent exhib­i­tion, spread through­out 26 rooms across 1,000 m², presents more than 3,000 arte­facts from all aspects of the day-to-day lives of our ancest­ors. Among the exhib­i­tion pieces are such world-renowned archae­olo­gical finds as arte­facts from the camp site of the Bilzingsleben Homo erectus, who hunted Mer­ck’s rhino­ceros and straight-tusked ele­phant, and the remains of a proto-Neander­thal found in travertine depos­its near Weimar-Ehringsdorf.