Bergisches Museum für Bergbau

In Bensberg, a district of Bergisch Gladbach, the Bergisches Museum für Bergbau, Handwerk und Gewerbe presents the region's everyday and economic history. At its centre are the former ore mining of the Bensberg ore district and the artisanal-rural lifestyles of the local population, with a focus on the 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum is run by the city of Bergisch Gladbach.

The museum's origins date back to the late 1920s: its founding was decided in 1927, and just one year later the collection could be opened to the public in the former washroom of Schloss Bensberg. At the end of the 1920s a show mine was created in a nearby house on Burggraben that had previously been used as a prison, and parts of the exhibition were gradually moved there; the ensemble was henceforth known as the Heimatmuseum Bensberg. A fire in 1952 destroyed the lecture hall with local-historical paintings and Baroque furnishings. Following conceptual and building renovations, the renewed Bergisches Museum für Bergbau, Handwerk und Gewerbe was presented to the public in 1981.

The main building, Burggraben 17–21, is listed as a historic monument and forms part of the historic Kesselshof, whose oldest sections date from around 1500. The museum ensemble also includes the rubble-stone house with a half-timbered gable and the historic half-timbered houses Burggraben 9–13, which date from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The permanent exhibition presents mining history, half-timbered architecture, domestic life and traditional textile production. It is complemented by workshops and economic buildings: a coppersmith's workshop, a ribbon-weaving workshop, a leatherworking workshop, a hammer mill, a chain forge, a wheelwright's workshop, a blacksmith's workshop, a craftsman's dwelling, a barn and a bakehouse. The facilities also include a museum school as a branch of the Schulmuseum Bergisch Gladbach – Sammlung Cüppers.