Naturmuseum Thurgau, Natural history museum in Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Naturmuseum Thurgau is a natural history museum housed in the Luzernerhaus in Frauenfeld. Its permanent exhibition presents over 1,000 specimens and objects on two floors, many set in habitat displays, alongside activity stations, short films and three audio tours. Three windows on the top floor look into one of the collection depots.
The collection began in 1859 when a local society started gathering plants, animals, and rocks to study the area, keeping the items in a nearby school. The museum moved to the Luzernerhaus in 1924, passed to public control in 1958, and gained its current focus as a natural history museum by 1972.
The museum runs about 30 public events a year led by specialists, who bring out extra objects to touch, hear or smell for guided tours. Family programmes let children stroke a fox fur, examine butterflies under a magnifier or smell beaver scent, and the museum also serves school classes as an out-of-school learning place.
The museum garden, planted with old cultivated and useful plants, is open from spring to autumn and covers about 300 square metres with several hundred species. Around 30 public events a year are led by specialists, and guided tours can be supplemented with objects to touch, sound and scent samples. The natural history museum shares its building with the Thurgau archaeology museum.
Look for three windows on the upper floor where you can glance into a storage area packed with preserved specimens normally kept out of sight. Behind those panes rests part of a collection of more than 115,000 items, though only a fraction ever appears in the main galleries.
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