Magdeburg's main museum of cultural history occupies a complex of historic buildings near the cathedral and covers the city's history from the Stone Age to the 20th century. The headline exhibit is the original Magdeburger Reiter — the 13th-century equestrian statue that is the city's symbol — displayed in a purpose-built room that lets you examine it at close range.
The museum is strong on Magdeburg's Ottonian period (when the city was the center of the Holy Roman Empire), the devastation of the Thirty Years' War (including vivid documentation of the 1631 Sack of Magdeburg, one of the most catastrophic events in German history), and the wartime bombing of 1945. There are also substantial collections of applied arts, arms and armor, and natural history.
The building complex itself includes the original Stadtpalais (town palace) of Otto von Guericke, the 17th-century mayor and scientist who demonstrated the existence of atmospheric pressure using a pair of hemispheres and sixteen horses (the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, 1654). Worth allocating two to three hours.