Museum of European Cultures

The Museum of European Cultures in Berlin-Dahlem is devoted to the lifeworlds in Europe and European cultural contacts from the 18th century until today.

After two years of renovation work, the museum opened again in 2011 with three newly designed exhibitions.

The permanent exhibition on the topic “Cultural Contacts – Living in Europe” and the temporary exhibition “Explorations in Europe. Visual Studies in the 19th Century” will be presented as well as the “Study Collection” in which object groups from the collections of the Museum of European Cultures – National Museums Berlin will be displayed on a regularly changing basis.

With about 275,000 original objects, it houses one of the largest collections of European collections on every day life and popular art. The topics are as manifold as the cultures in Europe: Weddings or commemorations of the dead, the cult of Napoleon to Halloween, music on Sardinia, the historically pagan 'Perchten’ processions in the Alps…

The Museum of European Cultures was founded in 1999 by merging the 110 year-old Museum of Folklore (Museum für Volkskunde) with the European collection of the Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde).