The Museum of Gothenburg () is a local history museum located in the city centre of

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

in western Sweden. It is located in the East India House (), originally built as the Swedish East India Company offices in 1762. The city museum was established in 1861. The City Museum is a cultural history museum. It displays Gothenburg and West Sweden's history, from the

Viking Age The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

to the present day. There is a permanent exhibition about the Swedish East India Company.

History

The museum was founded in the East India House in 1861. Modelled on the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

in London, it initially comprised natural history, art and books and covered art, science and industry. Its founders were Sven Adolf Hedlund, AF Ericsson, August Malm and Victor von Gegerfelt. The merchant John West Wilson paid for a fourth wing which opened in May 1891 shortly after his death. At the time of the Gothenburg Exhibition in 1923 the city's collections were split in two, with the art housed in the Gothenburg Museum of Art and the rest in the Gothenburg Natural History Museum. Between 1993 and 1996, several of the city's museums on archaeology, general history and the history of industry, education and theatre merged to form the Gothenburg City Museum.

References

External links

Official website
Museums in Gothenburg

History museums in Sweden Swedish East India Company Listed buildings in Gothenburg Government buildings in Sweden 1861 establishments in Sweden Museums established in 1861 19th-century establishments in Gothenburg and Bohus County {{Sweden-museum-stub