Archaeology in Baden – Expothek¹

Brief description

The new permanent exhibition follows a revolutionary museum concept: Thanks to modern technology, museum visitors are turned into museum users.

Epoch

650,000 B.C. – 8th century AD

Special features

Visitors can touch original objects for the first time as part of the Expothek!


The exhibition starts in a mystical atmosphere: Selected objects present the early cultural history of Baden, from the Palaeolithic period (650,000 B.C.) to the Carolingians (8th century A.D.). Highlights of the exhibit include a boar's tooth wrapped in bronze wire found in Karlsruhe (1,200 - 1,100 B.C.) and the “Heidelberger Kopf” (Heidelberg head - 5th century A.D.), which once decorated the hill of a high-status, early Latène culture burial.

In the second room, visitors enter the brightly illuminated Expothek itself. It looks like a research laboratory: Interactive media tables offer a variety of research tools, quiz games, and digital puzzles. Trained employees, called Explainers, are on hand to help. They explain how the interactive tables work, and present exhibition objects to users on request – archaeology you can touch!

Virtual reality (VR) sets new standards for museum exhibitions in the third room, the Expolab. Three scenarios visualise the contexts where the original objects displayed here were first used. When visitors put on their VR goggles, the real room disappears, as the objects all around are placed in their original contexts and a thrilling story begins ...

 


Picture gallery

A visitor admires the sculpture of the Heidelberg head
A hand tool from Bruchsal that is more than 50,000 years old
Chest ornament made of bronze and a boar's tooth
three Merovingian ornamental discs with various images on them
Two bow brooches and one disc brooch, all very nicely decorated
An employee presents an object on the order of a visitor
A visitor examines an object with a magnifying glass