GlockenStadtMuseum Apolda
About This Site
A museum about bells — the ones cast in this town and sent around the world — and about the wool and textile trade that shared the same streets. It is currently housed as a "Museum auf Zeit", a museum on borrowed time, in temporary premises on the Auenstraße.
Three families, four hundred years
The permanent exhibitions are built around the three bell-founding families the town's trade ran on — Rose, Ulrich and Schilling — and around Apolda's textile industry, which the museum traces over more than four hundred years.[1] Bells and wool in one building is not an odd pairing here: they were the two things this town sold, and often to the same customers abroad.
How many bells is disputed
The museum states that more than fifty thousand bells were cast in Apolda and delivered around the world.[1] The town's own account of the same trade gives more than twenty thousand[2] — both are the town's own institutions, and the two figures differ by a factor of two and a half.
A museum on borrowed time
The collection is currently shown as a "Museum auf Zeit" at Auenstraße 11 — temporary premises.[1]
Questions visitors ask
- What is the GlockenStadtMuseum about?
- Bells cast in Apolda and sent around the world, and the wool and textile trade that shared the same streets. The permanent exhibitions are built around the three bell-founding families the town's trade ran on — Rose, Ulrich and Schilling — and Apolda's textile industry, traced over more than four hundred years.[1]
- How many bells were cast in Apolda?
- The museum says more than fifty thousand;[1] the town's own account of the same trade gives more than twenty thousand.[2] Both are the town's own institutions, and the figures differ by a factor of two and a half.
- Can I visit right now?
- The collection is currently shown as a "Museum auf Zeit" — a museum on borrowed time — in temporary premises at Auenstraße 11.[1]
- Where is it?
- Auenstraße 11, 99510 Apolda.[1]
Sources
- GlockenStadtMuseum Apolda — GlockenStadtMuseum Apolda, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Der Glockenguss — Stadt Apolda, retrieved 29 August 2026
Visit Information
Auenstraße 11, 99510 Apolda
In Weimar's history
Around Weimar
Northeast
The museum is the town's own, and its subject is what the town did: bells, and textiles.