In the middle of the old town center of Gerolstein, below the Löwenburg, is the largest and oldest geomuseum in the Eifel, the Natural History Museum Gerolstein. The museum shows stone witnesses from the region's geological past on three floors.
The interesting offering is complemented by a comprehensive presentation from the fields of paleontology, mineralogy and volcanism.
The Gerolstein Natural History Museum comprises four components that can be visited together or separately
- a mineralogical collection,
- a historical collection,
- a forest museum,
- the georium
The mineralogical collection contains items on loan from a passionate collector. It shows rocks, especially from abroad, where you can see many beautiful crystal shapes and colors. The chemical composition is given for almost all minerals, which is why this mineralogical section would be very suitable for rock science in the upper level of high school.
You can also find excellent fossils from the Gerolstein area. The exhibits range from Devonian to Eifel volcanism, from trilobites to corals. The historical collection includes finds from the Stone Age through the Roman period to the Middle Ages. This department is relatively small. A hike to the “Buchenloch” natural cave on the west side of the Munterlay rock (approx. 20 to 30 minutes) would be recommended because some of the exhibits from the historical collection were found there.
If you are ever in Gerolstein, you should also visit Villa Sarabodis. The house contains a small museum with finds from a Roman country estate from the 1st century AD and numerous other finds from past centuries in and around Gerolstein. The Church of the Redeemer, the Protestant town church from 1911/1913, is also worth seeing. The Forest Museum is an excellent addition to the Natural History Museum.
This expansion of the original Natural History Museum is housed at the top of the building's roof. It is set up according to the latest museum educational principles: Here the students can do something, they can touch something, they can set themselves tasks and solve their questions with the help of mechanical or electrical models. The following aids are available for this:
- Partition walls that can be moved,
- Audio samples for bird calls,
- a microscope under which you can look at self-made preparations.
Since you can get very busy in the forest department, it is better not to visit the forest museum with an entire school class at the same time (at best up to 20 students in one session). In principle, if you have a larger S I class (25 to 30 students), it is more advantageous to plan the visit with two teachers or to use a museum guide. If you have divided the class, have one group visit the forest museum, while the other group looks at the other two collections. You can change after about 30 minutes. It is therefore possible to visit all departments of the museum in one hour.
Opening times
Monday - Friday 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, Sunday and public holidays 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
October:
Mondays - Friday 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, Sunday and public holidays 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
November 1st - March 31st: closed
Guided tours for groups by appointment
Address
Hauptstraße 42
54568 Gerolstein
Tel. (0 65 91) 13 18 0