historic museum of Görlitz

The Kulturhistorisches Museum Görlitz and the Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften share three protected buildings in the city centre. The Kaisertrutz and the Reichenbacher Turm stand beside the Platz des 17. Juni, while the Barockhaus Neißstraße 30 occupies the via regia, a trade route more than nine centuries old. Jasper von Richthofen has led the museum since 2000. The Kaisertrutz began as a cannon bastion built from 1490 to guard the western gate. During the Thirty Years War its Swedish occupiers withstood imperial and Saxon besiegers, giving the fort its name in 1641. Converted to a Prussian guardhouse in 1848, it became a museum in 1932 and reopened after modernisation in 2011 with a gallery of modern art. The Reichenbacher Turm, first recorded in 1376, shows anchors added in 1935 bearing coats of arms of lands that once ruled Görlitz. Inside the Barockhaus Neißstraße 30 visitors see the restored living rooms of the merchant Johann Christian Ameiß and the former library of the Oberlausitzische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. The museum displays medieval sculpture, late Gothic panel paintings and textiles in the Kaisertrutz. From the Reichenbacher Turm’s viewing platform there is a wide view over the city and its fortifications.