Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden
About This Site
More than forty historic buildings, most of them taken down elsewhere in Thuringia and rebuilt here, furnished as they were lived in. It calls itself Thuringia's largest open-air museum and invites you to travel through five hundred years — which, unusually for a slogan, is roughly what the buildings cover.
Houses that were moved, 1979
The majority of the buildings did not begin here. They were relocated from other regions of Thuringia, restored, and furnished true to the original[1] — which is the standard method of open-air museums and still an odd thing to stand inside. More than forty large and small buildings are spread over two sites,[1] and the museum was founded in 1979.[2]
What is in them
Large farmhouses, and then the things that make a rural economy legible: a flower-pot pottery, and Thuringia's oldest post mill[1] — a windmill that turns bodily on its post to face the wind, which is the kind of engineering that looks improbable until you see the scale of the timber it needs.
Why it is worth the trip from Weimar
Weimar's museums are about a court and the people it attracted. This one is about everybody else in the same landscape at the same time: how they built, how they lived, how they worked. The two subjects belong together, and the distance between them is the reason most visitors never see the second one.
Questions visitors ask
- What is the Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden?
- Thuringia's largest open-air museum by its own description: more than forty historic buildings, most of them relocated from elsewhere in Thuringia, restored and furnished as they were lived in, spread over two sites and spanning roughly five hundred years.[1]
- What can I see there?
- Large farmhouses alongside the buildings that make a rural economy legible: a flower-pot pottery, and Thuringia's oldest post mill — a windmill that turns bodily on its post to face the wind.[1]
- When was it founded?
- In 1979.[2]
Sources
- Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden — Thüringer Freilichtmuseum Hohenfelden, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Chronik — Gemeinde Hohenfelden, retrieved 29 August 2026
Visit Information
Hohenfelden, Weimarer Land
In Weimar's history
Around Weimar
Southwest
The museum stands in this village, which the municipality's own chronicle dates its founding to 1979.