Heidelberg

A world-renowned pharmacy history museum located in Heidelberg Castle, Germany, offering a journey through 2,000 years of pharmaceutical history. Founded in 1938, the museum features the most comprehensive collection of pharmacy artifacts in the world – over 20,000 objects. The German Pharmacy Museum (Deutsches Apotheken-Museum) in Heidelberg Castle houses the world's most extensive collection on the history of pharmacy, spanning from antiquity to the 21st century across ten outstanding interior rooms of the historic castle. The museum showcases fascinating insights into the history of pharmaceutics through fully preserved interiors of historic apothecaries from the 17th through 19th centuries, including painted cabinets of a former monastery apothecary, magnificent Baroque apothecaries, and elegant designs of the Biedermeier period. Among the approximately 1,000 remedies displayed, visitors discover curiosities such as pulverized mummy, valued in the 16th century as a remedy for cough, sore throat, broken heart, shivers and headache. The museum features valuable apothecary vessels made of glass, glazed earthenware and brightly colored maiolica, while the domed apothecary tower houses an impressive laboratory with period equipment. Located within the magnificent Renaissance Heidelberg Castle, the museum attracts up to 600,000 visitors annually, making it one of the most visited museums in Germany. The museum grounds include medicinal gardens that recreate the 16th-century botanical collection of electoral court pharmacist Philipp Stefan Sprenger.