Roentgen-Museum

The Roentgen-Museum in Neuwied is a museum of domestic culture run by the Neuwied district. It stands in a building designed in the 1920s by the Cologne architects Mattar and Scheler, blending Heimatstil with classical and baroque forms. The four-storey structure houses about 800 square metres of exhibition space and is protected as a monument. A garden behind the building displays stone objects such as gravestones, boundary markers and commemorative stones.

The museum grew from an archaeological collection opened in 1928 into a centre for 18th-century courtly living. It showcases the work of the Neuwied cabinetmakers Abraham Roentgen and his son David, whose luxury furniture supplied courts from Paris to St Petersburg. Their clients included Catherine the Great of Russia, King Louis XVI of France and Frederick William II of Prussia. The Roengens’ pieces feature intricate marquetry and gilded bronze mounts, alongside clocks made with the Uhrmacher Peter Kinzing. A highlight is the Apollo clock, a musical timepiece delivered to the Russian imperial court.

Visitors also find an exhibition on Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, who became mayor of Neuwied-Heddesdorf in 1852. The Westerwald rooms recreate the domestic life of ordinary people in his time. Portraits and plans illustrate the history of Neuwied as a baroque planned town. On the first floor, changing exhibitions present furniture, porcelain and jewellery alongside works by artists such as Wolfgang Mattheuer and Werner Tübke.