Mercedes-Benz Museum, Automobile museum in Stuttgart, Germany
The Mercedes-Benz Museum is an automobile museum in Stuttgart, Germany, directly outside the main gate of the Daimler factory. Its building, designed by UNStudio, uses three overlapping circles with the center removed to form a triangular atrium recalling a Wankel engine. The exterior is wrapped in pale silvery-grey metal panels and horizontal glass ribbons, with "Mercedes-Benz Museum" in metal lettering near the base. Inside, two spiraling ramps create a double-helix route through nine levels.
Daimler-Benz opened the brand's first museum at its Untertürkheim plant in Stuttgart in 1936 for the company's 50th anniversary; by 1938 it held 18 DMG cars, 9 Benz & Cie. cars, 6 Mercedes-Benz vehicles and 19 engines. A new building by Rolf Gutbier and Hans Kammerer followed in 1961, and the collection moved to the current UNStudio building outside the factory's main gate, opened on 19 May 2006.
Visitors descend through a spiraling interior where cars stand beside cultural objects and photographs showing how people traveled and lived during different periods. The display connects engineering progress with everyday life, revealing how vehicles shaped work, leisure, and social habits over more than a century.
The museum opens Tuesday through Sunday from 9 AM to 6 PM and remains closed on Mondays. Audio guides are available in several languages and help visitors navigate the layered levels and time periods.
The double helix structure allows two groups of visitors to follow separate storylines simultaneously and meet at specific points along the way. This design makes the building itself an exhibit of modern architecture, embodying the idea of movement and evolution in its form.
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