Historisches Museum Schloss Gifhorn

The Historisches Museum Schloss Gifhorn is a local history museum in Gifhorn, Lower Saxony. It occupies the Kommandantenhaus, a 16th-century Renaissance building within the castle complex. The adjacent Schlosskapelle, built in 1547, is also part of the museum. The permanent exhibition spreads over four floors and is divided into five sections covering regional history from prehistory to the 20th century. Natural history displays include fossils and taxidermy that show how the landscape and wildlife have changed. A reconstructed 19th-century pharmacy is one of the highlights of the collection. The museum traces its origins to 1914, when a local heritage association was founded to preserve memories of rural life threatened by industrialisation. Early displays were housed in a school, then moved to a teacher-training college and finally to the castle chapel. After the Second World War, the first professional director, Otto Heinz Werner, began collecting contemporary art. His successor, Jürgen Conrad, focused on everyday life in the town and region. Since 2015 the archaeologist Birte Lehnberg has continued this emphasis while expanding the museum’s public programmes. Visitors walk through rooms arranged chronologically, starting with geological specimens and prehistoric tools. The natural history section shows how ice-age animals once roamed this area. Later floors display farm tools, household objects and photographs that tell the story of Gifhorn’s growth. Temporary exhibitions often explore themes such as the Welf dynasty or regional identity. The chapel itself, with its simple furnishings, offers a quiet space for reflection on the centuries of change documented inside the castle walls.