Legal history does get attention in some of the world’s general museums. However, worldwide a number of museums is devoted to subjects from legal history. In particular criminal law is well served. Some museums focus on a particular subjects, for example taxes, customs, courts, forensic medicine, police forces and barristers. Old prisons have been reopened as museums. In some cases legal historians collected papyri or even founded papyrological institutes, and thus I mention a number of digitized collections. Some museums are rarely open, others can be visited only on appointment. HistorIcal buildings and sites, objects and artefacts create a telling image of law and justice, and this influences also our contemporary perceptions.

Here museums have been categorized mainly alphabetically by country. When possible and sensible some museums have been grouped under a special subject heading. Whenever present online catalogues, virtual tours and digital collections have been noted. I have added links to a number of relevant associations and societies. The list is certainly not complete. Any adjustments or additions are welcome. At the end of this overview I point to a number of museal federations.

Argentina

• Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA, Buenos Aires – the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada had become the torture centre of the Argentine military dictature

Australia

• Fremantle Prison
• Old Melbourne Gaol
• Justice & Police Museum, Sydney
• Cascades Female Factory, South Hobart, Tasmania – a former women prison; together with ten other locations it forms the group of the Australian Convict Sites showing the history of the deportation of prisoners; the locations are listed on the Australian Heritage List

Austria

• Kriminalmuseum, Vienna – together with the Museum der Bundespolizeidirektion, Wien
• Schloss Scharnstein, Armtal
• Hans Gross-Kriminalmuseum, University of Graz – a museum around the life and work of criminologist Hans Gross with a virtual collection

Belgium

• Nationaal Museum van Douane en Accijnzen, Antwerp – a museum and archive for both the Flemish police force and customs
• Musée de la Police Integrée, Brussels – a museum for the history of the federal police
• Politiemuseum Antwerpen – open on appointment; the police museum in Wommelgem had to close its doors in 2018
• Gevangenismuseum, Merksplas – a prison museum; founded as a penal colony, part of the Koloniën van Weldadigheid

Brazil

• Museu da Polícia Civil, São Paulo
• Museo do Crime,  Associação dos investigadores de Polícia do Estado de São Paulo

Canada

• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Heritage Centre, Regina, Saskatchewan
• Vancouver Police Museum
• Canadian Military Police Museum – a virtual museum
• La Prison des Patriotes, Montreal – connected with the Maison Nationale des Patriotes
• Canadian Human Rights Museum / Musée canadien pour les Droits de la Personne, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Chile

• Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago de Chile – with a digital library; interface Spanish and English

Colombia

• Museo de Ciencias Forenses, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá

Cuba

• Presidio Modelo – a former prison following the panopticum model

France

• Musée du Barreau de Paris – a museum for the history of barristers and attorneys
• Musée de la Préfecture de Police, Paris
• Musée de la Gendarmerie Nationale, Melun
• Musée de la Contrefaçon, Paris – a museum for the history of counterfeiting
• Collection Criminalistique, École Nationale Supérieure de la Police, Lyon – with a virtual tour
• Musée de médecine légale et d’anthropologie criminelle, Université Lyon
• Expositions, École Nationale d’Administration Pénitentiaire, Agen – with a digital library
• Musée du Parlement, Versailles
• Musée de l’histoire de la justice, des crimes et des peines, Criminocorpus – a virtual museum with rich collections; interface French and English
• Musée nationale de l’Assurance maladie, Lormont – the history of the organisation and legislation for health assurance in France; online library catalog and virtual tour
• Musée des Avocats de Strasbourg – this museum opened in 2017

Germany

• Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Berlin
• Sammlung des Instituts für Rechtsmedizin, Universität Halle-Wittenberg
• Medizinhistorische Sammlungen, Karl-Sudhoff-Institut, Universität Leipzig – with a collection about forensic medicine
• Asservatensammlung am Institut für gerichtliche Medizin, Universität Tübingen
• Kriminalmuseum Frankfurt am Main
• Kriminalmuseum Fürth
• Polizeigeschichtliche Sammlung Niedersachsen, Nienburg/Weser
• Kriminalmuseum, Rothenburg ob der Tauber – one of the most visited legal history museums, with due attention to the balance between artefacts and factual information
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für Polizeigeschichte e.V. – with links to police museums worldwide
• Bayerisches Polizeimuseum, Ingolstadt – since 2011 a permanent exhibition in Turm Triva of the Bayerisches Armeemuseum (Bavarian Army Museum)
• Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse, Neurenberg – a museum for the Nuremberg Trials, with a bibliography, see also a web page of the Peace Palace Library, The Hague; among important websites are the Nuremberg Trials Project (Harvard University) and a page with documents of the Library of Congress, see in particular the virtual exhibition The Nuremberg Trials at 70 (Harvard Law School Library) with an overview of other online resources
• Mittelalterliche Lochgefängnisse, Neurenberg – the fourteenth-century city jail in the cellars of the town hall
• Sammlung Alte Gerichtsbarkeit, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Neurenberg – one of the best documented collections of artefacts concerning early modern judiciary, see the Archiv-Rechtsaltertümer in the object catalogue, with some 200 objects; more (older) images of objects can be found using the Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg
• Reichskammergerichtsmuseum, Wetzlar – founded by the Gesellschaft für Reichskammergerichtsforschung, the society promotes the study of this former German supreme court (1495-1803)
• Rechtshistorisches Museum, Karlsruhe – a general museum for legal history, with special attention for the current German Supreme Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht
• Mittelalterliches Foltermuseum, Rüdesheim am Rhein
• Strafvollzugsmuseum, Ludwigsburg – a museum in a former prison

Greece

• Forensic Medicine Museum, University of Athens

Hong Kong

• Police Museum, Hong Kong
• Hong Kong Correctional Services Museum

Hungary

• Police Museum, Budapest

Ireland

• Kilmainham Gaol

Italy

• Museo di Antropologia Criminale Cesare Lombroso, Università di Torino – this museum started with the collection created by Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)
• Collezione L. Tenchini, Museo e Biblioteca Storica Museale di Biomedicina, Università di Parma – a nineteenth-century collection on legal anthropology
• Museo Criminologico, Rome
• Museo della ‘Ndrangheta, Reggio di Calabria

Japan

• Criminal Materials Department, Meiji University Museum, Meiji University, Tokyo
• Osaka Human Rights Museum, Osaka City

Malaysia

• Royal Malaysian Police Museum, Kuala Lumpur

Netherlands

• PIT Veiligheidsmuseum, Almere – the Dutch national security museum focuses on the police force, fire brigades and ambulance services
• Nederlands Politiemuseum, Apeldoorn – a police museum with an online catalogue
• Politiemuseum, Zaandam – a smaller collection for the history of the Dutch police
• Marechausseemuseum, Buren – this museum shows the history of the national police force and military police, founded in 1814
• Gevangenpoort, The Hague – a prison museum adjacent to the Willem V Painting Gallery;
• Belasting- en Douanemuseum, Rotterdam – the Dutch Tax and Customs Museum; some 400 objects can be viewed at its own website and at the Memory of the Netherlands subdomain of the Delpher portal
• Gevangenismuseum, Veenhuizen – the collection of this prison museum will be described shortly; 12,000 images from the collection of this museum and mainly from the database of the former Dutch Centre for Documentation on Legal History (NCRD) can be viewed at the Memory of the Netherlands subdomain of Delpher
• Koloniën van Weldadigheid [Colonies of Charity] – a website around the nineteenth-century history of a number of agricultural colonies and two penitential institutions, Veenhuizen (see above) and Merksplas (Belgium)
• Museum Blokhuispoort, Leeuwarden – a museum on the history of prisons in a former prison, with the virtual exposition Gevangen in Friesland [Imprisoned in Frisia]
• Collectie Nederlandse Politie toen en nu [Collection Dutch Police Past and Present] – a virtual museum
• Torture Museum, Amsterdam – a tourist attraction

New Zealand

• The New Zealand Police Museum, Porirua

Paraquay

• Museo de la Justicia, Asunción

Rumania

• Rumanian Police Museum, Bucarest – information in Rumanian and English

• Muzeul Agentului de Poliție (Police Agent Museum, Bucarest

South Africa

• Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
• Robben Island Museum

Spain

• Museo de Policia Nacional, Avila -with an app
• Museo de Antropología Médico-Forense, Paleopatología y Criminalística “Prof. Reverte Coma”, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• Museo de la Guardia Civil, Madrid
• Museo de la Policia Municipal, Madrid
• Museo de Policia Vasca, Vitoria-Gasteiz – interface Basque and Spanish

United Kingdom

• Pathology and Forensic Medicine Collection, University of Aberdeen
• Tolbooth Museum, Aberdeen – a former jail
• City Police Museum, London
• The Royal Military Police Museum, Southwick Park – access only on appointment
• Crime Museum, London – not regularly open for the general public
• Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham
• National Centre for Citizenship and the Law
• Police History Society – with numerous links
• Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre, London
• Jedburgh Castle Jail and Museum – a Howard reform prison from 1823
• Ruthin Gaol, Ruthin, Derbyshire – a prison museum

United States of America

• The New York City Police Museum – with virtual exhibitions
• Museum of the American Gangster, New York
• The Drug Enforcement Administration Museum and Visitors Center, Arlington, VA – with virtual exhibitions
• Burlington County Prison Museum, Mount Holl, NJ – with also attention to paranormal phenomena
• Museum of Baltimore Legal History, Baltimore, MD – only on Facebook
• National Museum of Crime and Punishment, Washington, DC
• Virtual Museum and Archive of the History of Financial Regulation, Securities Exchange Commission Historical Society – with virtual exhibitions
• Museum at The Rock: Alcatraz Island – with not only the prison but also the 1969 occupation and historic gardens and archival collections
• Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, MO – with the Old Courthouse and the famous Dred Scott case – see for that case for example The Revised Dred Scott Case Collection (Washington University, St. Louis, MO)
• National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN
• Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, AL
• National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA
• Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA – this prison opened in 1829; its model has been discussed and copied all over the world; with an extenisve overview of prison museums worldwide
• U.S. Army Military Corps Regimental Museum, Fort Leonard Wood, MO

Switzerland

• Schweizerisches Zollmuseum, Cantine di Gandria – a museum for the history of customs

Custom and tax museums

• International Association of Customs Museums – the federation of custom museums, with 23 museums
• Nationaal Museum en Archief van Douane en Accijnzen, Antwerp
• Told- of skattehistorisk selskab, Denmark
• Toldskatmuseum, Copenhagen – closed in 2016
• Tullmuseum, Stockholm
• Tullimuseo, Helsinki – interface Finnish, Swedish and English
• Musée des Douanes et Accises, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxemburg
• Musée Nationale des Douanes, Bordeaux
• Deutsches Zollmuseum, Hamburg
• Deutsches Steuermuseum und Finanzgeschichtliche Sammlung, Brühl – closed, the collections have been moved to the Deutsches Zollmuseum
• Belasting- en Douanemuseum, Rotterdam – the Dutch Tax and Customs Museum reopened in 2012
• The UK Border Agency Museum, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool – an exhibition
• Revenue Museum, Irish Tax and Customs, Dublin
• Schweizerisches Zollmuseum, Cantine di Gandria

Money and finance museums

• Museu da Moeda, Luanda
• Money Museum, Österreichische Nationalbank, Vienna
• Casa Nacional de Moneda de Bolivia, Potosí – with an archive, library and museum
• Museo Numismatico, Banco Central de Chile, Santiago de Chile
• Museo Casa de la Moneda, Banco de la República en Colombia, Bogota
• Geldmuseum der Deutschen Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main
• Collections de monnaies et de jetons, Gallica, Bibliothèque national de France, Paris
• Museo della Moneta, Banca d’Italia, Rome – interface Italian and English
• Museo della Zecca di Roma – with digital collections
• Currency Museum, Bank of Japan, Tokyo
• Banknote and Postage Stamp Museum, National Printing Bureau, Tokyo
• Currency Museum, Bank Central ta’ Malta, La Valletta
• Currency Museum, Central Bank of Nigeria, Abuja
• Museo Numismatico, Banco Central de Peru, Lima
• Museu do Dinheiro, Banco de Portugal, Lisbon – interface Portuguese and English
• Currency Museum, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, Riyadh
• The Economic History Museum of Sri Lanka, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Colombo
• Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid
• Real Casa de Moneda, Segovia – with a multilingual interface
• Money Museum, Zürich
• Royal Mint Museum, Llantrisant
• Money Museum, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• Origins of Value: A Virtual Museum of Money and Finance, International Center for Finance, Yale Management School
• Museum of Money and Financial Institutions, New York Stock Exchange – a virtual museum
• Coins, Currency and Medals, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
• American Currency Exhibit, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco – in fact a set of exhibits on several themes in American financial history

At the portal Numismatik created by Benedikt Zäch many money museums are mentioned, and at Hendrik Maekeler’s website you will find even more. The former Dutch Geldmuseum in Utrecht had a central role in the International Numismatic Libraries Network (INNL). Its collection of coinage has been transferred to the National Numismatic Collection of the Dutch Central Bank in Amsterdam, with a searchable database. A number of German cultural institutions have digitized their historical monetary collections at the portal KENOM: Virtuelles Münzkabinett.

Banking museums

• Museo Banco Provincia, Sarmiento, Buenos Aires – with also an archive and library
• ANZ Banking Museum, Melbourne
• Taka Museum, Bangladesh Bank, Dhaka
• NBB Museum, Nationale Bank van België – interface in four languages; with digitized collections; you will find also an online collection on barter objects (French and Dutch), a virtual tour and many links to other money and banking museums
• Museo de Valores do Banco Central, Brasilia – Brasil
• Bank of Canada Museum, Ottawa
• Museos del Banco Central, San José, Costa Rica
• European Association for Banking History (EABH)
• Suomen Pankin Rahamuseo – Finland
• L’histoire de la Banque de France
• Sparkassenmuseum, Leipzig
• Sparkassen-Museum, Eisenach
• Museo Virtual, Banco Atlántida, Honduras
• ilCartastorie, Museo dell’Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli, Naples
• Reserve Bank of India, Museum, Mumbai
• Museum Bank Mandiri, Jacarta – since 1998, located in the building of a former Dutch trade company
• Museum, Bank Indonesia, Jacarta
• Museo Banco de México, Ciudad de México – with an illustrated online catalogue
• Museu Deher (Museum of Money), Kiev – interface Ukrainian, Russian and English
• Museo, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, Lima
• Museum of the National Bank of Rumania, Banca Nationalā a României, Bucarest – interface Rumanian and English
• Museum, Bank of England, London
• Savings Bank Museum, Ruthwell, Dumfries
• Gamla Bankgården i Vrigstad, Sävsjö
• Osmanli Bankasi Müzesi (Ottoman Bank Museum), SALT Research, Istanbul – with a virtual exhibit
• Museum of American Finance, New York
• Central Bank History, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

More can be found starting with the links of Roy Davies, Exeter

Insurance museums

• Deutsches Versicherungsmuseum Ernst Wilhelm Arnoldi, Gotha
• Versicherungsmuseum, Neubrandenburg
• Museo del Seguro, Fundación Mapfre, Madrid – with a virtual museum
• Storia delle assicurazioni / Insurance History, Fondazione Mansutti, Milan – interface Italian and English; with a small digital library
• Insurance Museum – a project for an new British museum

Papyri

A selection of digitized collections, in alphabetical order by country

• Macquarie Papyri, Macquarie University, Sydney – with useful divisions into subsets
• Papyri, Universitätsbibliothek Graz – a catalogue with images of 42 papyri
• Papyrussammlung, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna – a very rich collection and additionally the Papyrusmuseum
• Papyri, Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent – 200 papyri at Ghent
• Papyri collections, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto – a catalogue and four collections
• Highlights, The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, Copenhagen – a selection with ten papyri
• Berliner Papyrusdatenbank (BerlPap), Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
• Papyrussammlung, Lehrstuhl für Antike Rechtsgeschichte, Universität Frankfurt – a digitized selection from the collection at this institute for legal history, with 100 papyri, mainly in Greek, but also some demotic and Coptic papyri
• Payrussammlung, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg – some 9,000 images of Greek, Latin, Arabic, Coptic and demotic papyri, and also ostraca
• Organa Papyrologica, Universität Leipzig – with also the Papyrus Portal for searching digitized papyri in a number of German papyri collections; in the Papyri Project database you can find the same collections and also papyri held in Basel; interface English, German and French
• Collections, Louvre, Paris – the collection portal of the Louvre brings you to some,3,800 papyri
• Les collections des papyrus, Institut de papyrologie, Université Paris-Sorbonne
• Photographic Archive of Papyri in the Cairo Museum, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University
• Papyri collections, Chester Beatty, Dublin Castle, Dublin – there are five papyri collections among the digitized collections
• Papyri Bononienses, AMS Historica, Università di Bologna
• PUG: Papiri dell’Università di Genova
• PSI Online – the Papiri della Società italiana and P. Laur., the papyri of the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana in Florence, and from other Italian universities
• Museo di Papiro Corrado Basile, Siracusa
• Papyrus database, Museo Egizio, Turin – one of the oldest egyptological museums
• Papyri, Digital Collections, UB Groningen – 126 papyri; interface Dutch and English
• OPES – Oslo Papyri Electronic System, Universitetet i Oslo
• Papyri, Department of Papyrology, University of Warsaw – with also papyri from Berlin and Wroclaw
• DVCTVS, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona – a project with papyri and ostraca held by several Catalan institutions; interface Spanish, Catalan and English
• Papyrus de la Bibliothèque de Genève
• Bodmer Papyri, Fondation Martin Bodmer and Université de Genève – papyri and some manuscripts, and a subsite for the Dyscolos of Menander (French and English)
• Michaelides Fragments, Cambridge University – papyri in Coptic, Greek and Arabic
• Papyri Collection, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester – with separately a Genizah collection for papyrus fragments from Cairo
• POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online, Oxford University – a catalogue with images and much more
• Tebtunis Papyri, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley – a collection with as its core papyri from the Fayum region in Egypt
• Duke Papyrus Archive, Duke University Libraries – 1,400 papyri; there is a second website with useful filters for searching
• Papyri, Houghton Library, Harvard University – nearly 170 papyri
• Princeton Papyri Collections, Princeton University Library
• Arabic Papyrus, Parchment and Paper, Marriott Library, University of Utah – some 2,100 documents, 770 of them are Arabic papyri
• Yale Papyrus Collection, Yale University Library – some 6,500 papyri

The Papyrological Institute in Leiden was founded in 1935 by three legal historians. It has a succinct list of links to the main papyrological portals, and also a virtual exhibit. You can find a very rich links collection at the website of the Association International des Papyrologues (Université Libre, Brussels). In particular Papyri.info gives quick access to editions and often images of papyri. The Trismegistos portal and its subdomains offer all its riches for subscribers, but there is plenty to find in open access. Multispectral imaging for papyri is shown at JSTOR in a digital collection created by the Brigham Young University

General information, portals and lists

The English Wikipedia features a list of jail and prison museums worldwide, with however mainly museums in the United Kingdom and North America. In the National Register of Historic Places, a website of the U.S. National Park Service, you can search for museums in historical buildings, including former court houses, jails and prisons.

The International Commission for University Museums and Collections of the International Council of Museums has a database in which you can find a number of museums for criminology, collections for the history of forensic medicine, and a number of former university prisons, in particular in Germany.

In the Federation of International Human Rights Museums a number of museums worldwide are represented which are dedicated to the history of human rights, the abolition of slavery and the memory of genocide. A number of similar institutions is to be found at the website of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (interface in four languages). The website Gedenkorte Europa 1939-1945 offers links to more places of memory in Europe concerning the Second World War. For Latin America and the Caribbean exists the Red de Sitios de Memoria Latinoamericanos y Caribeños. A number of memorials to dictatorial regimes can be traced at the website of then project After Dictatorship (Universität Würzburg).