Stuttgart Mercedes-Benz Museum

About the Mercedes-Benz Museum

Stuttgart is the automotive capital of Germany, home to the Mercedes-Benz Museum — a futuristic architectural landmark designed by UNStudio. Opened in 2006, the museum's striking double-helix structure spirals upward nine floors, guiding visitors through over 130 years of automotive history from the invention of the automobile to the present day. The building itself has become an icon of modern Stuttgart, reflecting the city's deep roots in engineering and innovation.

Stuttgart's claim to be a birthplace of the automobile rests on Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, who built their first engines in Bad Cannstatt in the 1880s and founded Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft there in 1890, while Carl Benz patented his motor car in Mannheim in 1886. A company museum existed at the Untertürkheim plant from 1961, but the present building, designed by UNStudio and opened in May 2006 near the factory and the Neckar, gave that history a landmark form: a double-helix structure of roughly 16,500 square metres displaying some 160 vehicles across nine levels. Today it functions as a point of reference for the city's industrial identity, drawing several hundred thousand visitors a year alongside the nearby Porsche Museum.