Ries Crater Museum, Nördlingen

A museum inside a 15-million-year-old impact crater, built from the shocked rock the impact made.

Key facts

Where

Nördlingen, Germany

Kind

Museum

Visiting

Public galleries

Nördlingen sits inside the Ries, a crater about 24 kilometres across made when an asteroid struck southern Germany about 15 million years ago. The town's church and old buildings are built of suevite, a rock made of fragments and melted glass thrown out by the impact. In 1960 scientists found coesite, a high-pressure form of silica, in that stone, which helped prove that the Ries was an impact crater and not a volcano.

The Ries Crater Museum, in a restored barn in the old town, explains how the crater formed, what impacts do to rock and how they affect life. It displays shocked rocks, meteorites and a piece of Moon rock collected by Apollo astronauts, who trained in the Ries before going to the Moon.

Highlights

• Suevite the impact rock of the Ries
• Apollo Moon rock on loan

Related pages

Opening times, what is on display and access to research collections change over time, so check with the institution before you visit.