Renaissance Palace Schloss Salder

Welcome to the Renaissance Salder Castle in Salzgitter

The centrepiece of the building complex arranged around a spacious inner courtyard is Schloss Salder, which is more than 400 years old. The representative building in the Weser Renaissance style looks back on an eventful history: built from 1608 onwards, it was partially destroyed during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). In the following, mostly more peaceful days, it served as a summer and hunting residence as well as a dowager's residence for the Guelphs. Later, the complex was transformed into an agricultural domain of the Brunswick dukes. After further quiet and turbulent times, the city of Salzgitter finally opened the Schloss Salder City Museum within its historic walls in 1962.

The extensive permanent exhibitions in the castle and its annexes present the past of the Salzgitter region in an overview and with attention to detail. The exhibition ranges from the geological foundations of the landscape to prehistory, early history and the Middle Ages to the development of the modern city in the 20th century. The focus is on iron ore mining and steel production. In addition, the economic and technical development of Salzgitter is discussed. Inseparably linked to this is the far-reaching transformation of the area between the Harz Mountains and the Heath in the 19th and 20th centuries from an agricultural region to the third largest industrial location in Lower Saxony.

Particularly remarkable are the skeleton of an ichthyosaur ("fish dinosaur") found in Salzgitter, which lived about 115 million years ago, original objects from the 50,000-year-old Neanderthal site in Salzgitter-Lebenstedt and large exhibits of machines and vehicles. The children's world is a popular attraction: a special presentation of historical toys of past centuries that is also important beyond the region in terms of quality and scope.