The Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, the Leibniz Research Museum for Geo-resources, was founded on 1 April 1930. From its modest beginnings as a “Historical Mining Museum”, now almost 90 years of history behind it, it has grown to become the world's largest mining museum.

With approximately 8000 m² of exhibition space and a 2.5 km long visitor’s mine – 1.2 km of which is accessible to visitors - the museum provides insight into the numerous methods of raw material extraction. And coal is not the only mined material explored here, for there’s also salt, gold, silver, and copper as well as less common raw materials, such as lithium and molybdenum.

Research and the presentation of globally outstanding artefacts in a museum setting, enable interconnections to be highlighted between raw material extraction, its subsequent processing and the related social and cultural developments. The exploration and portrayal of mining as one of mankind’s archetypal production activities, which has all the time remained an indispensable, active sector of economy throughout the world, makes a crucial contribution to understanding the development and current status of our society and culture.