Urban culture and history from the High Middle Ages to the present day can be experienced in one of Southern Germany’s best preserved late medieval town quarters.
The tour through seven historical buildings takes you into the living spaces and worlds of the former inhabitants. The architectural highlight of the museum is the glass-roofed inner courtyard: it is a central meeting place, café, event location and a unique, atmospheric place to look around and linger.
The quarter is named after the Humpis family, whose heraldic animal, a greyhound, is still the museum’s mascot today.
As co-founders of the large trading company “Große Ravensburger Handelsgesellschaft”, the Humpis family shaped the history of the imperial city of Ravensburg in the late Middle Ages. In “their house”, at Marktstraße 45, they tell how they cultivated relations throughout Europe as overseas merchants, and how they helped shape the city’s politics as its mayors. The Wucherer family of tanners will take you back to 18th century Ravensburg. This period was characterised by religious parity and tolerance, attempts at regulation by the authorities, social conflicts and economic hardship.
In the 19th
and 20th century the Humpis Quarter was a place of hospitality, conviviality and exchange between social classes, locals and outsiders. At the same time, this was also a time of political inequality, ideological conflicts, nationalism, global wars, exclusion and expulsion. These topics are examined in rooms in the east wing, the history laboratory, and in temporary exhibitions.
