Apothekenmuseum, Cottbus, Pharmacy Museum in Cottbus, Germany.

The Apothekenmuseum in Cottbus sits in a historic building at Altmarkt and displays the interior of a 19th-century pharmacy. The space preserves furniture, glassware, and ceramics that document the craft and daily work of early pharmacies.

The first pharmacy in Cottbus, the Lion Pharmacy, was founded in 1573 and remained the only one for a long time. Only in 1797 did the Eagle Pharmacy open as the second establishment, showing how long this trade was kept as a monopoly.

The museum keeps three complete pharmacy interiors: the 1930 Offizin of the Adler-Apotheke in Peitz with porcelain and glass vessels for in-house preparation, a herb and poison chamber with wooden drawer cabinets and locked poison cupboards, and a GDR-era Offizin from the Adler-Apotheke in Fehrbellin. A galenic laboratory shows stills, drying ovens and a tincture press.

The museum complex consists of the street-front house at Altmarkt and the Old Lion Pharmacy in the courtyard behind it. The exhibition covers 400 m², so allow roughly an hour. The entrance is on the Altmarkt side; the courtyard wing and its 1988 brick-lined deep well are reached through the passage.

In the courtyard behind the front building, a brick-lined deep well was uncovered in 1988; it is the only surviving historic well in Cottbus's old town. The museum complex also includes the rear Alte Löwenapotheke wing, added around 1700, and both buildings are protected monuments.