Museum Petersberg

The Museum Petersberg is a regional history museum in Petersberg, Saalekreis, Saxony-Anhalt. It occupies a four-sided courtyard that once served as a royal Prussian forestry house. The buildings date to 1752 and have been largely reconstructed while remaining protected monuments. The museum’s displays include permanent exhibitions on the former Augustinian canons’ foundation and the origins of the Wettin dynasty. A detailed model shows the church and surrounding buildings as they stood around 1200. Visitors also find original and replica documents, seals, household items and clothing that trace the rise and fall of the once influential monastery. Another permanent exhibition covers rural crafts in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, showing that the area’s economy extended beyond farming. The former farm buildings house an exhibition on 19th-century culture and social history. Upstairs in the old hayloft, displays examine political, economic and social change in northern Saalekreis from 1945 to 1990. A restored bakehouse lets visitors watch traditional bread baked in a wood-fired oven on special days. The museum also presents a large loan of about 350 tin toys and archives from the Kraus Fandor factory, displayed in interactive cases that recall an early industrial workshop.