Explora, Museum and cultural heritage monument in Nordend-West, Frankfurt, Germany.
Explora was a private science museum housed in a former civil-defence bunker at the rear of Glauburgplatz on Schwarzburgstraße, opposite the Glauburgschule in Frankfurt. Its walls of reinforced concrete were 2.15 m thick and its roof 2 m thick. Exhibits included anaglyph images, anamorphoses, holograms, lenticular and interference images, and Europe's largest QR code. It closed in November 2016 and the bunker was demolished in 2021/22.
The building was originally constructed as a military defensive structure and later converted into a museum. It has since been officially recognized as a protected cultural heritage monument in Germany.
The museum's name refers to exploration, fitting a collection built around perception tricks: anaglyph red-green stereo images, anamorphic drawings readable only with aids, holograms, lenticular and interference-based 3D pictures, and vexier images. It also held Europe's largest QR code and interactive stations on QR code uses.
The museum closed at the end of November 2016 after 21 years, and the bunker was demolished in 2021/22, so there is nothing left to visit at Glauburgplatz. The building stood at the rear of the square on Schwarzburgstraße, opposite the Glauburgschule. For three-dimensional images and optical experiments today, the Museum 3. Dimension in Dinkelsbühl, run by Gerhard O. Stief since 1987, continues the same subject.
The bunker's camouflage included a balustrade, false windows and a slate roof, meant to fool Allied aerial reconnaissance. Its walls were 2.15 m thick and its steel-reinforced concrete roof 2 m thick. At the end of the war the Wehrmacht used the building as headquarters for the Frankfurt garrison; after the war bombed-out Frankfurt residents were housed there temporarily.
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