Museum Witt Munich
Ten million moth and butterfly specimens — the world's largest collection of its kind — built by the heir to one of Germany's oldest mail-order dynasties.
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Founded in 1980 by Thomas J. Witt, whose family built the Witt Weiden mail-order house, the museum held 3 to 3.5 million butterflies alongside a scientific library and a working crew of researchers. From 2000 it operated as part of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München. The collection closed to the public in 2023 and was transferred in full to the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology.
What to look for
- The world-record moth holdings — the source explicitly calls it the largest collection of certain moths on earth
- 3 to 3.5 million butterfly specimens sourced from every continent
- The scientific library that underpinned ongoing Lepidoptera taxonomy publications
The museum closed permanently in 2023; the entire collection now sits with the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (Zoologische Staatssammlung München) — contact them directly to ask about researcher or public access.
Museum Witt Munich is one of 37 sights worth the detour in Munich, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Munich pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Munich
- Allianz ArenaThe world's first stadium with a full color-changing exterior — 75,000 seats wrapped in inflated ETFE plastic panels that can change color across the entire facade.
- Deutsches Museum125,000 objects across 50 fields of science and technology — all on a former coal island in the Isar.
- Nymphenburg PalaceAt 632 metres across, this Baroque summer palace is wider than Versailles — and it started as a birth announcement.
- Alte PinakothekThe gallery that taught Europe how to build a museum — then filled it with five centuries of Old Masters.
- FrauenkircheThe twin towers top out at just over 98 meters — Munich caps the entire city at 99 m, so nothing can overtake them on the skyline.
- Englischer GartenA Massachusetts-born American Loyalist, fleeing Britain after the Revolution, drew up plans for what became one of the world's largest urban parks.