Naturama Museum Aarau

The Naturama Museum is the natural history museum of the canton of Aargau, and it stands on Feerstrasse in Aarau, close to the railway station. Its origin goes back to the early 19th century, when a society of naturalists in Aargau began to assemble a collection of local plants, animals and rocks, and the collection grew into a museum that now combines research, education and public display. It is not a museum of exotic wildlife but of the region itself: the landscapes of the Aare valley, the Jura, the forests, rivers and wetlands, and the animals and plants that live in them.

The exhibitions show the natural history of Aargau across a very long timescale. Fossils record the age when the area lay under a warm sea and later when dinosaurs lived nearby; at Frick in the Aargau Jura, remains of the long-necked Plateosaurus have been found, and the museum places such finds in a regional context. Later displays deal with the ice ages and the mammals that lived through them, including mammoths, and then bring the story to the present with beavers, frogs, bats and the varied habitats of the Swiss Plateau. Collections of insects, birds and minerals are extensive, and the museum’s herbarium of Aargau plants, the Herbarium Argoviense, is a scientifically important record of the region’s flora.

The museum pays attention to the way people use and change nature. Displays look at farming, forestry, urban growth, water management and the pressures on species, which gives the exhibitions a current relevance beyond the objects. Interactive stations, films, games and a hands-on laboratory aim to involve children and adults, and the museum offers programmes for school classes and families. Special exhibitions and excursions in the surrounding countryside add variety.

Opening times and ticket prices are listed on the museum’s website and can change, and special exhibitions may have separate arrangements. The museum is a short walk from the station, which makes it easy to include in a trip to Aarau, and it complements the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the old town with a different side of the city. It is useful on a rainy day.

Naturama suits families with school-age children, nature and science enthusiasts, and visitors who want to understand the landscape that they will see on walks in the Aargau Jura. Allow around two hours. Combine it with a walk through the Old Town, whose painted gables are a few minutes from the museum.