With the support of STAWAG, the museum service of the municipal cultural department is offering a free program for families during the Christmas vacations for the fourth time. The Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, the Couven Museum, the Ludwig Forum Aachen, the Zollmuseum and the Centre Charlemagne are once again taking part this year.

"Between the years, you can discover the treasures of our museums and experience the museums as places where families are welcome. There are guided tours and a combination of exhibition tours and creative workshops in the museums' art workshops," says Irit Tirtey, Managing Director of Kulturbetrieb Aachen.

Parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews can choose their favorite topic from a total of nine offers. "The family offers in the museums are free of charge and therefore accessible to everyone. We look forward to showing families works of art from different eras in the museums and are eager to hear their impressions and questions," says Pia vom Dorp, head of the municipal museum service.

The wide range of activities includes six workshops and three guided tours. In the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, the family workshop "Fashion design past and present" invites you to design your own fashionable creations. The "Wunderkammer Adventure" workshop focuses on orientation on water and land with compasses, globes and sundials, and visitors can design and artificially age their own treasure maps. The "Freestyler" workshop in the Ludwig Forum focuses on building figures from wooden parts. Here you can saw and drill. At the Centre Charlemagne, you can discover new puzzle pieces of the past and experience how exciting urban archaeology is.

In the Couven Museum, theater costumes from the current exhibition are viewed together. It shows how they are created, what tricks and gimmicks are used and how many people are involved. The Customs Museum in Aachen-Horbach is a vivid reminder of the border history of our region - with confiscated souvenirs and stories of highly adventurous chases.

"Supporting educational and cultural offerings is an important concern for us. The work of art education in the city's museums makes a very important contribution to this. It's a wonderful idea to bring families closer to art and culture in special formats between the years," says Kirsten Haacke from STAWAG's Corporate Communications department, explaining her company's commitment.

Information and registration
Museumsdienst Aachen
E-mail: museumsdienst@mail.aachen.de
Tel: 0241 432-4998

All offers can be found on the Museum Service website at www.museumsdienst-aachen.de

Dates:

Adventure Archaeology
Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Centre Charlemagne, Katschhof 1, 52062 Aachen
Sat 27.12.2025, 11 am - 1 pm

Aachen is an old city and the city archaeologists are constantly finding new pieces of the puzzle of the past during their excavations. Which tools are used? How is it determined whether the find is really old? And who do the finds actually belong to? In the museum workshop, visitors can try out many of these questions for themselves.

Fashion design past and present
Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Wilhelmstraße 18, 52070 Aachen
Sun 28.12.2025, 11 am - 1 pm

Clothing and fashion were also important topics in the past. In the museum, we explore Renaissance fashion - ladies wore hoods, floor-length sumptuous dresses made of precious fabrics with elaborately designed sleeves and embellishments of lace, pearls and precious stones. Men's dresses were shorter, often made of velvet or brocade and adorned with elaborate embroidery or decorative buttons. In the art workshop, visitors create their own dress designs from fabrics, lace, ribbons and yarns on DIN A4 boards. If you like, you can also make a "dress-up doll" out of cardboard.

LGBT ... Purple, yellow, blue, turquoise ... +

Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Ludwig Forum for International Art, Jülicher Straße 97-109, 52070 Aachen
Tue 30.12., 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Rainbows play a fascinating and multifaceted role in our world. As colorful as its colors, so diverse are its meanings. When you see a rainbow, you can decide for yourself what it means to you. You will be amazed at how different and colorful the rainbow is, just like us humans. The artist Rochelle Feinstein has also been working in the colors of the rainbow for some time now. She uses many different techniques so that the colors always appear new and different.

Family tour "Stories of border and customs"
for families with children from primary school age
Horbacher Straße 497 52072 Aachen-Horbach
Tue 30 December 2025, 11.00 am - 12.30 pm

The Aachen Customs Museum is a reminder of European border history and its customs duties. Exciting stories from the 1950s tell of adventurous chases by customs officers and smugglers. Also on display are smuggled and confiscated souvenirs such as a stuffed bear, ivory bones, crocodile bags, snake skin and evidence of brand piracy, as well as uniforms, a room with original furniture and a miniature model of the Aachen-Lichtenbusch customs crossing.

Family tour of the exhibition "Taken to the extreme. Costumes from the Aachen Theatre"
Guided tour for families with children from primary school age
Couven Museum, Hühnermarkt 17, 52062 Aachen
Tue, 30.12.2025, 3 - 4 pm

The exhibition opens the curtain on the world of costumes, which is usually hidden from theatergoers, and provides a fascinating insight into the art of costume design at Theater Aachen.

Freestyler
Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Ludwig Forum for International Art, Jülicher Straße 97-109, 52070 Aachen
Fri, 02.01.2026, 2 - 4 pm

Drill, saw, plug and connect. You'll find all kinds of ideas for building simple figures in a pool of materials made from various pieces of wood and other natural materials. Different constructions and intuitive combinations create bodies that can be moved. Each figure finds its own style freely and with a lot of imagination.

Family tour "Time travel at the Couven Museum"
for families with children from primary school age
Couven Museum, Hühnermarkt 17, 52062 Aachen
Sat 03.01.2026 / 3 - 4 pm / Couven Museum

How did wealthy Aachen families live in the 18th and 19th centuries? There is a lot to discover in the Couven Museum: a ballroom, a music room, a mysterious astronomical clock, precious glasses, foot warmers, pocket watch holders and flea traps. Letters were written instead of WhatsApp messages, dolls were only for girls and hobbyhorses for boys. And why is there a pharmacy in the house where chocolate was sold as medicine?

The wind and the devil
Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Centre Charlemagne, Katschhof 1, 52062 Aachen
Sun 04.01.2026, 11 am - 1 pm

Have you ever wondered why it is often so windy at the cathedral? An Aachen legend tells what the devil came up with to annoy the people of Aachen together with the wind. You can create your own work of art based on this story in the museum workshop.

Wunderkammer adventure
Workshop for families with children from primary school age
Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Wilhelmstraße 18, 52070 Aachen
Tue, 06.01.2026, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

People have always collected things that were valuable, that appealed to them, that made them curious, that were special and rare. The Suermondt-Ludwig Museum has just such a treasure trove! We mainly look at things that were used for orientation on land and at sea, such as richly decorated compasses, globes, sundials and various measuring instruments. How were they used? And how do we orient ourselves today? In the art workshop, we design treasure maps that we age with coffee grounds. Which treasure should be hidden?