Knauf-Museum Iphofen, Relief art museum in Iphofen, Germany.

The Knauf-Museum Iphofen occupies the former Prince-Bishop's Rentamt on the market square, a sandstone building with a hipped roof completed in 1693 and still showing late Renaissance elements. Its roughly 900 m² of exhibition space holds 250 plaster replicas of ancient reliefs, from Mesopotamia and Egypt through Greece, Rome and ancient America to India, cast from originals in museums worldwide and in situ.

The building began in 1688, when Iphofen's council laid the foundation stone for the town's first Baroque structure; it was completed in 1693 as a sandstone Rentamt with a hipped roof and a portal framed by grimacing faces. It served as an inn, then from 1723 as an office and wine cellar for Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, and later as a judicial and forestry office. Knauf acquired it in 1967, and the museum opened on 30 June 1983 with 150 casts.

The museum is run by Knauf Gips KG, the plaster company of the Knauf brothers, and its name refers to them. The collection grew from an idea suggested to Alfons Knauf by the Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Abdelhay Abu Bakr: a comparative overview of the great ancient cultures. Since 1987 temporary exhibitions have deepened or complemented the permanent display.

The museum occupies the former Prince-Bishop's Rentamt on the market square of Iphofen, with the entrance on the Baroque portal side. The permanent collection covers around 900 m², and a 2010 extension adds 400 m² for temporary exhibitions. The sources do not state whether the rooms are step-free, so visitors with mobility needs should ask the museum directly before planning a visit.

Many of the plaster casts were made directly from originals kept in museums around the world, including the Hammurabi law stele from Mesopotamia and the Sesostris III boundary stele from Egypt. Seeing these works here means being able to study them at full scale and up close, which is often not possible in the institutions that hold the originals.