The Hallstatt Museum () is a museum in Hallstatt, Upper Austria, that has an unrivalled collection of discoveries from the local salt mines and from the cemeteries of Iron Age date near to the mines, which have made Hallstatt the type site for the important Hallstatt culture. The museum is close to the Hallstättersee, below the salt mines on the mountainside. The museum, the salt mines, and the Dachstein Ice Cave are designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since 2002 the museum has occupied the former Hallstatt parsonage, and the previous holdings of the museum have been reunited with many of the objects which had previously been on display at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. History The earliest discoveries were made in 1846 by Johann Georg Ramsauer, who was the Bergmeister or Official of the Habsburg Salt Mines. He started a series of meticulous excavations on the cemeteries around the mines between 1846 and 1867. He was helped with this by a mining assistant, Isodor Engl. Then from 1871 to 1878, Engl continued the excavations on behalf of the Museum Francisco-Carolinum in Linz. Many of these earlier finds became part of the collections in Linz Museum. In 1884 the Hallstatt Museum Association started to form a museum collection. In 1889, the Anthropological Society of Vienna and the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum joined with the Hallstatt museum to undertake further excavation. The excavator was Bergrat Hutter, and he was assisted by Isodor Engl. This led to many of the most important discoveries being placed on display in Vienna. In 1895 Engl became the curator of the Hallstatt museum. In 1907 new excavations were started by Marie, Duchess of Mecklenburg - Schwerin, who had the support of Kaiser Franz Joseph and Kaiser Wilhelm (on behalf of the Berlin Museum)), who excavated 40 graves. She was a leading figure in Iron Ages studies and conducted many excavations. However, after the 1st World War, her collection was confiscated by the Serbian Government. In 1934 the collection was sold in the United States and the finds from Hallstatt were acquired by the Peabody Museum, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Isodor Engl was followed as the museum's curator by Frederick Morton in 1925. In 1927 Morton and Adolf Mahr began a new series of excavations, both in the mines and above ground. Their excavations were at first on the ‘Grünerwerk’ area of Bronze Age Salt Mining. This was