Natural History Museum, Bamberg

Step into the Bird Hall and you are in a room that has barely changed in 200 years: white and blue cabinets on two levels, a gallery all round and more than a thousand colourful mounted birds. Bamberg's Natural History Museum in the island town thus owns one of the oldest and finest natural history cabinets in the world, a true "museum within a museum". Alongside are dinosaurs, minerals, an extinct zebra and some famous fakes.

History: a cabinet for the university

Prince-Bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal set up a natural history cabinet in 1791 for the professors and students of the university in the former Jesuit college, where the museum still is. After the university closed in 1803, the naturalist Dionysius Linder took over and expanded the collection. Today it is run by the Bavarian State Natural History Collections.

What to see

• Bird Hall: Set up from 1794 and preserved roughly as it was around 1810, in its original location. Nobody knows why it was never modernised; a restoration in 2006–2010 brought back its original colours. Birds below, insects, fish, reptiles, mammals and plants on the gallery.
• Wax fruit: About 200 wax models of apples, pears and cherries from around 1800, most of them varieties no longer grown.
• Quagga: One of only about 24 complete specimens in the world of this extinct African zebra.
• Würzburg "lying stones": World-famous fossil forgeries from the early 18th century.
• Dinosaur hall and Wattendorf fossils: A new hall on Jurassic island Europe with a pterosaur and a dwarf long-necked dinosaur, plus exceptionally preserved fossils around 154 million years old.

Good to know

The collection holds some 200,000 objects. If you have been to the Altenburg castle, look out for the head of "Poldi", the last castle bear, who lived there until 1982. The special exhibition "Dead as a Dodo?", open since 4 September 2026, tells the stories of threatened and rescued species from the Bird Hall.

Opening hours and tickets (as of October 2026)

1 April to 30 September: 9:00–17:00; 1 October to 31 March: 10:00–16:00. Closed on Mondays and on 1 January, Shrove Tuesday, All Saints' Day and 24, 25 and 31 December. Admission €5, pensioners €3, children from 6 and students €2.50; family and annual tickets available. Cash or German EC debit card only.

Getting there

Fleischstraße 2, in the heart of the island town. About five minutes on foot from the Old Town Hall and 20 minutes from the station.

Tripto tip

Allow one to one and a half hours and save the Bird Hall for last. It is a good rainy-day option, and in Advent the Christmas market on Maxplatz is just a few steps away.