Neue Burg

Collection of Arms and Armour

You wander past ceremonial armour, the most expensive fashions in clothing, find out about types of cutting and stabbing weapons and firearms, and the complex techniques involved in tournament equipment. The superlative handicraft and artistic quality of the pieces derives from the standards of prestige upheld by the former owner: practically all West European sovereigns of the fifteenth to the early twentieth century are represented with items. By examining made-to-measure armours we can reconstruct the stature and size of quite a few protagonists of European history. No other collection of arms and armour in the western world can compare with this concentration of high-quality pieces, their history  documented iwithout a break.

Collection of Ancient Music Instruments

The condition, quantity and diversity of the instruments are peerless throughout the world: lutes, violins – for instance a quite exceptional rarity, a violin once owned by Leopold Mozart – hunting horns, trombones, guitars, kettle drums and grand fortepianos. Each of the twelve galleries is devoted to a musical epoch (Late Renaissance and Baroque are particularly rich in exhibits) or a musical personality.

Ephesus Museum

The excavations on the terrain of the ancient city of Ephesus have been directed by Austrian specialists ever since 1895. Ephesus possessed one of the Seven Wonders of the World in the Temple of Artemis and advanced during the Roman era to become the capital city of the Province of Asia. Historic finds were transported into the Imperial Collection of Antiquities until 1906: columns, capitals, mosaics, the sculpture of a Greek athlete and the relief of a warlike Amazon, bronze candlesticks and relics of souvenir hunting by lovers of antiquity. The detailed model of the city graphically rounds off the impression of the character and grandeur of the ancient city. Pride of the Ephesus Museum is the so-called “Parthian Monument”. The monumental relief series may have been part of a Hellenistic temple.