Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz

Behind the door of the former Tietz department stores' lies a world of wonder. Where ties and fine stockings used to be sold, you can now embark on a geological journey.

Visitors are enchanted as soon as they enter the atrium: a fossilised forest "grows" upwards, with the longest fossilised tree trunks reaching up to the upper floors. The first floor of today's cultural and educational centre is home to the Museum of Natural History, which has an impressive collection of plants and animals that have turned to stone.

The eruption of a volcano in the north-east of Chemnitz 291 million years ago was the reason for the cell-accurate preservation of the trees, as well as for the preservation of an exceptionally well-preserved ecosystem. In this Permian period, flowers and blossoms or dinosaurs were not even a thought. Instead, dragonflies reached a wingspan of 70 centimetres and centipedes grew to a length of two and a half metres. In the museum's insectarium, visitors can get to know their descendants, watch honeybees and leaf-cutter ants at work and discover colourful, iridescent butterflies and spiders.

To uncover the secrets of the fossilised forest, the Museum of Natural History conducts scientific excavations in the city. At the "Window into the Earth's History" on the Sonnenberg, visitors can look over the shoulders of palaeontologists during special opening hours and sometimes even go fossil hunting themselves.