Bestattungsmuseum, Vienna

Bestattungsmuseum is a museum devoted to Vienna’s funeral culture, installed beneath the mortuary hall at the main entrance of the Central Cemetery. Its present exhibition has been open since 13 October 2014, after a redesign by ARGE OMS, checkpointmedia and architect Gustav Pichelmann. The collection reaches roughly a thousand objects, including coffins, funeral carts and tools used by gravediggers.

Its strangest object may be the reusable coffin introduced by Emperor Joseph II in 1784: a hinged underside allowed the body to drop into the grave, leaving the coffin available again. You can also encounter a rescue alarm from 1828, once fastened to a recently deceased person’s wrist so help could be summoned if apparent death ended. The museum began in 1967, making this an unusually long-running Viennese institution devoted to the practical, anxious and sometimes darkly inventive side of burial.