Geomuseum at Münster University

The Geomuseum Münster stands in the heart of the city, between the Domplatz and Aegidiimarkt. It occupies a three-winged Baroque building designed by Gottfried Laurenz Pictorius in the 17th century. The museum traces its origins to 1824, when it opened as the Museum mineralogicum et zoologicum. For more than 150 years it was Westphalia’s only significant fossil repository, drawing rare finds from across the region. Its collections were moved for safety during the Second World War and returned intact after the building was rebuilt in 1956. In 2007 the mineralogical and palaeontological museums were reunited under the name Geomuseum. The museum’s value lies in the quality and rarity of its specimens. Fossils from the Cretaceous period include fish remains dug from the Baumberge hills in the 19th century. Ice Age mammal bones come from caves and gravel pits in Westphalia, while Miocene fossils were unearthed on the Greek island of Samos in the 1920s. A complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth found near Ahlen is now on display behind a large street-level window. Other highlights are trilobites from northern Spain, corals from the Palaeozoic era, and an Iguanodon uncovered in the Sauerland during the 1970s. Visitors find fourteen themed areas arranged around more than thirty display stations. The permanent exhibition presents around 2,300 original fossils, rocks and minerals. There are thirty-eight tactile and audio stations, an audio guide in several languages, and lifts and ramps for full access. The restored Baroque building also contains the university’s oldest lecture hall. Outside, the museum faces the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur across the narrow Pferdegasse.