Altes Posthaus Melk

The Stadtmuseum Melk stands in the town of Melk in Lower Austria. It occupies a former post house built in the 16th century, its stone walls and small windows marking it out from the surrounding streets. The building once carried mail between Vienna and the west, and still shows traces of its past use. The museum holds a 6 500-year-old figurine known as the Bird-Faced Idol, one of the oldest objects in the region. In 1903 the first printed catalogue listed 420 items, and later curators added large archaeological collections from sites such as Höpfenbühel and the Dober sand-pit. During the Second World War the collection survived intact, and in 1946 it reopened in the brewery before moving to its present home in 1959. The Kultur- und Museumsverein Melk, founded in 1985, arranged many exhibitions and built up a photo archive of more than 30 000 images. Inside, visitors find displays of prehistoric tools, Roman stones set into the façade, and documents from the town’s past. The main room preserves the atmosphere of a 19th-century study under curator Franz Xaver Linde. Upstairs, glass cases hold the Bird-Faced Idol and other early finds, while the archive room keeps thousands of photographs and records. Outside, the quiet square and the old post house’s gabled roof frame views of Melk’s abbey across the Danube.