Visiting Munich's Museum of Childhood

Munich's Museum of Childhood

At one end of the Marianplatz in central Munich, Germany, there is a building that looks like a tower straight out of a fairytale. As you climb the narrow, stone spiral staircase, you feel as if you might meet Rapunzel! In this tower is the Museum of Childhood and Toys.
  I went there to see some antique playthings and dolls houses. Part of the charm of older miniatures is that they rarely were made to a specific scale. This was well illustrated in the museum displays of 19th century miniatures.
  

Dolls house miniatures from 1875

There was a two-room house, a drawing room and bedroom, from 1875 that featured tin furniture and elaborate gold window pelmets. The furniture and furnishings were a mixture of scales, as were the dolls.
  Another display showed a haberdashery shop with bolts of material on the simple shelves and a little sewing machine nearby.
  The Nuremberg Kitchen caught my attention. There was so much to look at in this display that would have been used as a teaching aid for young girls, readying them for the time they grew up and had their own households to run.

A Nuremberg Kitchen

  The kitchen was bursting with rows of jelly moulds, pewter plates, woven baskets, porcelain canisters, scales, scoops and sieves. In the middle stood a doll wearing a red skirt and checked apron, a little kitten at her feet.
  I spent a happy hour browsing the other displays in the museum that ranged from Donald Duck and Barbie, to clockwork windup toys, singing mechanical birds and dancing bears.

Wind up tin toys