Naturmuseum Thurgau, Natural history museum in Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Naturmuseum Thurgau is a natural history museum in the old town of Frauenfeld, set inside an 18th-century building near the train station. Inside, three floors hold over 1,000 displays of regional plants, animals, and rocks, many arranged as lifelike scenes, while a 300-square-meter garden outside shows useful plants in summer.
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 insect room, especially the ant collection on the second floor, is a point of local pride and shows how tiny creatures shape the region's landscape. Visitors can also join hands-on sessions where experts bring out objects to touch, smell, or listen to, turning a quiet museum visit into a shared family experience.
The museum is open Tuesday through Friday in the late afternoon and on weekends in the early evening, with closures on Mondays. Visitors with wheelchairs or limited mobility can move around easily, and staff are available by email or phone to answer questions about the displays or nature in your own garden.
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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