Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn

StadtMuseum Bonn presents the history and culture of the city in an extensive collection and exhibition. It is housed in central Bonn at Franziskanerstraße 9, opposite the university building at Koblenzer Tor. The museum's rooms are located in a building erected in the 1970s; the two floors originally served as the sauna and cleaning facilities of the Viktoriabad. Whether the museum will remain permanently at this location is uncertain.

The institution’s roots go back to an association founded in 1886; in the 1950s the holdings of today’s local history and heritage association were transferred to the city, after which a close collaboration with the city archive developed. In the anniversary year 1989 the city council decided to establish a city museum; initially only small rooms in the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Haus were used for special exhibitions. The permanent exhibition “Von der Römerzeit bis heute” was opened on 14 January 1998 in the newly allocated display rooms and covers about 1,000 square meters. Plans to redevelop the quarter around the Viktoriabad repeatedly created uncertainty about the museum’s future; after legal disputes and a citizens’ initiative a planned sale did not proceed, and the area is now slated for demolition of the Viktoriabad and mixed-use development. Various proposals exist for a new location for the museum; a final decision has yet to be made.

The collection comprises more than 10,000 objects: around 600 paintings, 1,900 prints, 1,700 rare books, 1,500 decorative arts objects, 200 sculptures and approximately 250 pieces of furniture, as well as historical costumes and uniforms. Many donations and bequests from the second half of the 20th century form the core holdings, with a focus on the 18th and 19th centuries; major endowments include holdings from the Franz Obernier Foundation and donations such as those from Curt Delander. Displayed works also come from artists of regional and national significance.

The permanent exhibition spans roughly 2,000 years of the city’s history. On display are an ancient floor mosaic, the “Bonner Löwe” as a medieval court emblem, baroque town views, a fully furnished colonial goods shop from 1893, a hair salon circa 1900, and two bourgeois salons from the turn of the century, including a set dining table with porcelain from the Ludwig Wessel factory dating to the Gründerzeit.

Among the special treasures are nine pieces of an originally 314-piece silver table service commissioned in 1792 for 36 persons. The service by Andreas Emmel (1759–1828), made between 1792 and 1794, exhibits Empire-style forms and rich ornamentation with acanthus, laurel rods, lion and ram heads, and pine cones; in its execution all metalworking techniques common at the time were applied. Acquired were three tureens, two four-armed girandoles and four candelabra.

In the same building is the Bonn NS Memorial. In several rooms on the first floor it documents the persecution and murder of Bonn’s victims of National Socialism through photographic and written documents as well as original objects, and presents research findings on everyday life, arbitrariness, opposition and resistance; it also commemorates the thousands of forced labourers and prisoners of war brought to Bonn. The NS Documentation Centre on the ground floor includes a reference library, a media library and an archive; the programme includes lectures, readings and talks with contemporary witnesses. Since January 2021 the memorial has been operated by the city; previously it was run by the support association. Because of the planned redevelopment of the Viktoriabad, a medium-term relocation of the memorial to the site of the former Benedictine convent in Endenich is planned, where the internment and deportation of Bonn’s Jews during the Shoah is to be commemorated.