Location and history The main part of the museum is located in the Barfüsserkirche (literally ‘Barefeet Church’) in the centre of the city of Basel. The Barfüsserkirche is a former
Franciscan church with its origins in the 13th century. In 1529, during the
Protestant Reformation, the site was given to the city. It was then used for multiple purposes, including as a hospital, school, and warehouse. The church was used for worship until 1794. From 1890 to 1894, the church was renovated to house the city's new Historical Museum. On 20 October 1975, workers discovered a brick-walled grave chamber in front of the
choir, containing the mummified corpse of a woman. She was identified as
Anna Catharina Bischoff and turned out to be an ancestor of
Boris Johnson.
Items in the exhibition The museum houses the
Upper Rhine’s most comprehensive
cultural history collection and the display area covers 6,200 square meters. The exhibition presents objects documenting handicraft traditions and everyday culture from ages past. Its focus is on the late
Middle Ages and the
Renaissance up to the
Baroque period. Leading highlights include: the treasury of the
Basel Cathedral, the Basel and
Strasbourg tapestries, the fragments of Basel’s
dance of death,
altars and ecclesiastical graphic works, the estate of
Erasmus of Rotterdam, the coin cabinet and
glass painting. The museum also preserves old cabinets of curiosities which have been bequeathed, as Amerbach cabinet and Faesch cabinet, which works great collectors Basel sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Management The museum is managed by the
canton of
Basel-City. Its origins lie with the Amerbach family in the 16th century whose
Wunderkammer was bought by Basel 1661 and brought to the public 1671. The cultural history objects of this Wunderkammer, together with the ones of other collections, became the
Historisches Museum Basel in 1894. ==Haus zum Kirschgarten==