New Exhibition!

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum—the largest museum of cultural history in the German-speaking region—has launched the new special exhibition Global Nuremberg, 1300–1600.

What is the Exhibition About?

This special exhibition explores the global networks of Renaissance Nuremberg, focusing on the city’s significance as a prospering hub of international trade, global news, and as a broker of novel cultural interactions worldwide, as well as on the long-lasting legacies of early modern globalisation.

The exhibition sheds light on globally circulating goods and materials in Renaissance Nuremberg, among them luxury commodities and raw exotic materials that sparked creativity and innovation in Nuremberg crafts, as well as the ways that Nuremberg citizens imagined and travelled the Renaissance world. After all, the world’s oldest surviving globe, the so-called Behaim Globe, was produced in Nuremberg.

Visitors will also be introduced to the global imagery sparked by Renaissance Nuremberg artists like Albrecht Dürer, whose motifs travelled the world and were replicated in places as far flung as India and Colombia.

The exhibition also addresses the darker side of early modern globalisation, including the involvement of Nuremberg merchants in the Atlantic slave trade, colonial conquests in the Americas, as well as military violence and violent economic encroachments in Africa and Asia.

The Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective contributed!

The exhibition builds on the unique holdings of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as well as a number of high-profile international museum loans and is the product of collaboration across disciplines and countries. Benno Baumbauer, Sven Jakstat, and Marie-Therese Feist have co-curated the exhibition and assembled a wide range of experts who contributed to the exhibition display and catalogue. Stefan Hanß, Professor of Early Modern History at The University of Manchester and member of The Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective, has contributed an essay on Renaissance Nuremberg’s entanglement with the Ottoman Empire to the exhibition catalogue.

More Information

The exhibition will be on display from 25 September 2025 until 22 March 2026.

The German exhibition catalogue is available open access and will be soon published in English.

Stefan Hanß’s richly illustrated contribution ‘Fear and Fascination: Nuremberg and the Ottoman Empire’ is available open access.

More information on the exhibition is available on the museum webpage of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

Image Credit: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, https://www.gnm.de/your-museum-in-nuremberg/ausstellungen/aktuell/nuernberg-global.

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