Mercedes-Benz Museum

Housed in a distinctive double-helix building, the museum follows the parallel stories of automotive history and the Mercedes-Benz brand, from Karl Benz’s first patented motorcar to modern Formula 1 cars, race-winning vehicles, and historic state limousines.

Planning your visit

The Mercedes-Benz Museum is a double helix in concrete and glass, and the structure does the curatorial work. Visitors take a lift to the top and descend along two interwoven spiral ramps that never quite meet: one carries the chronological history — Benz's 1886 patent motorcar, the first automobile, through to the present — while the other runs thematic collections covering commercial vehicles, celebrity and state limousines, and motorsport. You can cross between them at intervals, which means the visit can be taken as history or as subject matter.

The collection includes around 160 vehicles, and the significant ones are genuinely significant: the Silver Arrows, the 300 SL Gullwing, the Popemobile, and vehicles belonging to heads of state. The motorsport hall banks the cars up a wall like a racing curve.

The museum does not omit the Daimler-Benz record under National Socialism, including forced labour, addressing it within the chronology.

Bookable options include entry tickets, guided tours, and day-trip formats from Munich pairing the Mercedes museum with the Porsche Museum, also in Stuttgart — the two together make a substantial day for anyone interested in German engineering, and the transport is handled. Current availability is shown below.