Vienna Crime Museum, Criminal history museum in Leopoldstadt, Austria.
The Vienna Crime Museum is a history museum in Leopoldstadt that examines criminal cases, police methods, and justice systems from medieval times to the present. The collection spans multiple exhibition rooms and displays original documents, photographs, weapons, and personal items from different periods.
The museum occupies the Seifensiederhaus, a building dating before 1685 with a long history as a residential structure. After its conversion into a specialized crime museum in November 1991, it became a significant venue for documenting Austrian judicial history.
The exhibits feature street ballads, criminal biographies, and newspaper articles that show how society perceived and portrayed crime over the centuries. Visitors can see how people once discussed such events and what mattered most to them.
The museum can be visited Tuesday through Sunday and offers audio guides in multiple languages to complement the German-language display texts. Visitors should allow adequate time since the exhibits can be studied in detail, and a guide helps interpret the content more effectively.
The collection includes materials from significant cases such as the assassination attempt on Emperor Franz Josef and documents about Jack Unterweger, a notorious Austrian serial killer. These items reveal how individual crimes shaped society and its institutions.
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