The Pied Piper Museum, housed in the Leisthaus alongside the general Hameln museum, traces the history, interpretations, and cultural afterlife of the Pied Piper legend through art, literature, and popular culture. The legend has spawned an extraordinary number of retellings, from medieval chronicles to Goethe to Robert Browning to countless films and picture books, and the museum collects many of these.
What makes the museum interesting beyond mere exhibition is the genuine uncertainty about what actually happened. The inscription on the Rattenfängerhaus records the disappearance of 130 children as historical fact. Scholars have proposed many explanations: a children's crusade, a plague epidemic, the recruitment of young emigrants for German settlement in Bohemia or Transylvania, or a medieval dance epidemic. The museum presents the evidence for each theory without forcing a conclusion.
Osterstrasse 8–9. Open Tuesday through Sunday.