Pathologic-Anatomic Museum Narrenturm

The Narrenturm (fools tower) is a quite old building and full of history. It‛s a rotunda – for we are in Vienna we could compare it to a Gugelhupf (Austrian ring cake) – which has five levels, 28 rooms each level, 13 squaremeters each room. In this rooms Kaiser Franz Joseph II. detained the „fools‟ of his time. These poor guys suffered from „melancholia‟, „madness‟ or „insanity‟ and should be cured mainly through nauseant and blood-letting. The Narrenturm opened in 1784 and was the first institution in Europe built exclusively for the treatment of mental patients.

The pathologic-anatomic collection exists since 1796 and shows „curiosities‟ of the human body. The collection is very huge because doctors and professors were obligated to prepare every physical peculiarity. Be ready for preparations of deformed body parts, skeletons and diseases; some of them are more than 100 years old. And don‛t go there if you are too sensitive – there is a lot of formalin, even with embryos in it.