Museum im Seelhaus

The Museum im Seelhaus is the town museum of Bopfingen in the Ostalbkreis. It occupies a half-timbered building raised in 1505 as a Seelhaus, a civic almshouse for the elderly and needy of the former free imperial city. After the Thirty Years’ War the house was run by a managing couple, and its farmland supported the foundation until inflation after the First World War ended the charity. In 1987 the restored building opened as a museum. The ground floor traces the region’s archaeology from geology onward. Neolithic flint-bladed sickles and handled chisels sit beside Bronze-Age burial pottery from Schweindorf. Early Iron-Age urn-field and Hallstatt sherds from Bopfingen-Trochtelfingen mark the transition. Sherds from the Ipf hill show continuous settlement from the Neolithic Rössener culture through the Urnfield and La Tène periods. Nearby Osterholz yielded glass beads, brooches and wheel-thrown pottery, evidence that fast potter’s wheels reached southern Germany by the late Hallstatt period. Upstairs, displays cover the outlying villages of Bopfingen. One room outlines the town’s political past, another the history of local churches. Further cases show farming tools, textile looms, leather-working gear and the town’s once-famous faience, stoneware and Hafner pottery. Documents and everyday objects trace centuries of economic and social change, and a small room recounts the story of the Seelhaus itself. Outside, a 20-kilometre walking trail starts at the museum and leads to the Ipf hill and many surrounding archaeological sites.