Kölnisches Stadtmuseum

The Kölnische Stadtmuseum is the municipal history museum of Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is housed in the former Franz Sauer fashion house since March 2024, which has been completely remodelled for the museum. The site is centrally located between the Minorite Church, Museum Kolumba and Breite Straße.

Its collection includes around 350,000 objects from the Middle Ages to the immediate present. The holdings range from the city seal from 1268 to paintings and graphics, militaria, coins, textiles, furniture and everyday objects to material evidence of current Cologne events. Social, economic and cultural history of the last 1200 years can thus be explored both on the individual object and in thematic depth. With the 2024 concept, only a small part of the collection can be made accessible to the public, but it will be placed in the context of cross-epochal emotions that form a central part of the permanent exhibition and deal with social and historical themes in a different way than usual.

In its more than 130-year history, the Stadtmuseum has resided under different names and in different buildings in the city area. The current location is also only temporary after the historic armoury building, which has been in use since 1958, had to be vacated in 2017 due to water damage and only the adjacent Alte Wache could be used for special exhibitions. It was reopened in the former Sauer fashion house in March 2024.

Annual visits to the old site, with its massive restrictions, last totalled 19,832 (2018). Unlike in other cities, about half of the audience is registered in Cologne, which has been interpreted as an indication of Cologne's attachment to its homeland. Thus the current museum concept, with its emotionalising approach, explicitly sees its role as "creating identity for urban society". Provided by Wikipedia