The Mountains of Tyrol

Cowbells, the Berliner Hütte mountain hut in the Zillertal Alps, glacial waste and a statue of Saint Nicholas – all are connected through the mountain landscape of Tyrol.

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  Tiroler Postkarten aus der Sammlung des MEK

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  Ausstellungsansicht "Die Berge Tirols" im Museum Europäischer Kulturen. Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Miriam Lotz

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  Ausstellungsansicht "Die Berge Tirols" im Museum Europäischer Kulturen. Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Miriam Lotz

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  Ausstellungsansicht "Die Berge Tirols" im Museum Europäischer Kulturen. Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Miriam Lotz

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  Ausstellungsansicht "Die Berge Tirols" im Museum Europäischer Kulturen. Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Miriam Lotz

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  Ausstellungsansicht "Die Berge Tirols" im Museum Europäischer Kulturen. Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Miriam Lotz

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The exhibition explores the relationships between people and mountains, past and present. Alongside historical objects, it features artworks, films, songs and interactive stations. An exhibition for mountain enthusiasts, families and curious visitors alike.

Tyrol’s mountains feel familiar: images of snow-covered peaks, untouched nature and mountain huts continue to shape the region’s image today. Yet a closer look also reveals motorways, dams and ski lifts. This is not a contradiction, but part of a region whose mountains have long been shaped by diverse forms of use. The mountains influence the lives of people in Tyrol, while people in turn shape the mountains themselves. Economic activity and scientific research are just as much a part of this landscape as trade and travel.

The exhibition focuses on the mountains of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, where global challenges such as climate change and mass tourism are especially visible. How are people responding to these challenges? What strategies emerge when tourism and mountain pasture farming lead to competing demands on the landscape, when avalanches and rockfalls become part of everyday life, or when snow fails to arrive in ski resorts?

Whether controlled avalanche detonations or glacial waste, Almkranz or Schluchtenteufel: the mountain stories told in this exhibition are at times beautiful, unsettling, exciting or moving. They reveal the many different relationships between people and mountains.

Berlin, too, plays an important role: for more than 150 years, the Tyrolean mountains have been part of Berlin’s leisure culture – from the so-called Alpine balls around 1900 to the Berlin section of the German Alpine Club, which built the Berliner Hütte mountain hut in the Zillertal Alps.

Discover and Participate

The exhibition presents historical and contemporary objects, graphics and photographs, films and songs, as well as artworks across approximately 300 square metres. The estimated visit duration is 60 to 90 minutes. Interviews and additional materials invite visitors to explore selected themes in greater depth.

Interactive stations invite visitors to become active themselves: touching materials such as pine wood or flax, photographing themselves in imaginary mountain landscapes, trying out games or creating their own mountain collages.

An audio guide (German/English) accompanies visitors through the exhibition. Children aged 6 to 10 can follow a special “mountain trail” designed for discovering, exploring and participating.

Children, young people and families are especially welcome.

Runtime: Wed, 29/07/2026 to Sun, 25/04/2027

Price info: Admission ticket. Museum Europäischer Kulturen

Price: €10.00

Reduced price: €5.00

Takes place here:

• Museum Europäischer Kulturen

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