Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen

Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen stands beside the lake, where wooden stilts rise from shallow water and walkways connect the shore with thatched houses. Germany’s oldest archaeological open-air museum brings Stone Age and Bronze Age settlements into view, spanning roughly three thousand years of life beside the water.

Oxygen-poor mud preserved posts, tools and household objects, allowing more than a century of research to shape these reconstructions. The wooden museum hall displays original tools, pottery fragments and animal bones, while interactive stations explain underwater archaeology and the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Archaeorama adds a 360-degree virtual dive through submerged pile fields and the methods used to study them.

Outside, Stone Age living spaces, Bronze Age workshops, stables and traces of ritual practice fill the recreated villages. Experimental archaeologists demonstrate woodworking and rope-making, and children can try ancient techniques along the Stone Age parcours. Near the end, two original houses erected in 1922 recall the museum’s beginnings. Pause on a jetty and listen to waves strike the stilts, as they may have done thousands of years ago.