Museum der Natur Gotha, Natural history museum in Gotha, Germany

The Museum der Natur Gotha is a natural history museum housed in the west tower of Friedenstein Palace, in the town of Gotha in Thuringia. Its collections cover geology, paleontology, and zoology, displayed across several floors of the tower.

The collection dates back to the 17th century, when Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha established a cabinet of natural curiosities. In 2010, the museum moved from the Ducal Museum to its current home in the west tower of the palace.

The museum sits inside the west tower of Friedenstein Palace, one of the largest surviving baroque palaces in Germany, which gives the visit an unusual spatial setting. Walking through rooms dedicated to Thuringian forest life or prehistoric reptiles inside a 17th-century palace feels quite different from a standard museum visit.

The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, and opening hours vary slightly by season. The west tower is located directly on the palace grounds, which are easy to reach on foot from the town center.

Among the collections are skeleton plates and footprints of ancient reptiles found at a former quarry near Tambach-Dietharz in Thuringia. These specimens are considered some of the oldest known remains of their kind in the world.

• Location: Thuringia
• Phone: [phone]
• Website: http://stiftungfriedenstein.de
• GPS coordinates: 50.94512,10.70426
• Latest update: March 3, 2026 13:52