Jurassic Museum Aalen

The Urweltmuseum Aalen stands in the old imperial city hall in the centre of Aalen, a town on the north-eastern edge of the Swabian Alb. Its exhibition rooms occupy the historic building that also contains the Spionturm, a medieval watchtower. The museum is the largest municipal museum for geology and palaeontology in Baden-Württemberg. The region is famous for its Jurassic rocks, which appear in three layers: Black, Brown and White Jura. In the 19th century geologists named the lower Brown Jura beds the ‘Aalenian’ after the town. Mining on the Braunenberg hill brought many fossils to light, though most left the area while local collections remained small. The museum now shows how the Ostalb landscape formed and what lies beneath the South-West German scarplands. Visitors walk through two floors of displays arranged from older to younger strata. Highlights include about 1,000 carefully prepared fossils of Jurassic sea creatures such as sea lilies, giant ammonites and fish-lizards. Life-sized reconstructions, a video station and touch objects bring the prehistoric sea to life. Special exhibitions have covered calcite crystals and local folklore, while the shop sells geological guides, minerals and souvenirs.