Weltmuseum

The important collection of the Vienna Ethnological Museum is based on the ethnographic holdings from the time of the Habsburg Monarchy, but also includes parts of the collection of the navigator James Cook. A total of over 3,000 ethnographic objects on display, and about 75,000 photographs and nearly 150,000 documents from all parts of the world (except Europe) in its collection make the World Museum one of the largest museums of ethnology on the planet.Centrally located on Heldenplatz and housed in the premises of the Hofburg Palace, the Weltmuseum is one of the most important museums in Vienna.

14 exhibition halls are dedicated to various themes and regions of the world, for example Mesoamerica, the South Pacific or Indonesia, but also colonialism and cultural conflict. At the forefront, however, are always people from all over the world and their diverse ways of life.

One of the most important attractions in Vienna’s Weltmuseum has long been a political issue.

Whether the magnificent feather crown, decorated with 400 bright green quetzal feathers, Spanish penacho, really once sat on the head of the Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma, is highly controversial from a scientific perspective. Mexico has long demanded the return of the Aztec headdress, since only a copy of the penacho is in Mexico City and it is the only surviving feather crown from that era.