Stiftsmuseet Maribo (Stiftsmuseum Maribo)

A museum at the heart of Maribo’s story

Stiftsmuseet Maribo stands just across from the town’s railway station, in a solid red-brick building from 1890 that once expressed Maribo’s confidence as a regional centre. Today it serves as the cultural history museum for Lolland and Falster, gathering archaeology, art and everyday objects into one compact, thoughtful space. Inside, high ceilings, generous windows and polished floors create a calm, almost civic atmosphere, where carefully lit exhibits draw you through layers of local history. The museum focuses on the surrounding islands rather than grand national narratives. Everyday tools, religious art, documents and personal belongings all help sketch out how people here have lived, worked and worshipped. It is an easy place to get your bearings if you are exploring the wider South Sea Islands, putting landscapes, churches and villages into context before you head back outside.

Lola and the deep past of Lolland

On the ground floor, you step straight into the world of “Lola”, a Stone Age girl who lived on Lolland around 5700 years ago. Her story is based on DNA extracted from a piece of birch-bark chewing gum uncovered during archaeological excavations, an unusually intimate trace of a single individual in prehistory. Using this research, the museum reconstructs aspects of her appearance, ancestry and even likely diet, then sets her within a wider Stone Age landscape of hunters, gatherers and early farmers. The exhibition uses soundscapes, lighting and large-format visuals to evoke wetlands, shorelines and forest clearings. Stone tools, pottery and bone artefacts are displayed in a way that links them to Lola’s imagined daily routines. It is an accessible way into archaeology, turning abstract dates and typologies into something personal and memorable while underlining how modern science can wring stories from tiny, unlikely finds.

Faith, symbols and medieval craftsmanship

Close by, the aptly named OMG (Oh My God) exhibition concentrates on medieval Christianity on Lolland-Falster. Here you encounter finely carved crucifixes, church furnishings and fragments of frescoes that once coloured the interiors of local village churches. Clever spotlighting isolates each object against a dark backdrop, emphasising the sculptural detail and sometimes raw emotional power of Christ figures and saints. Panels and models unpack how these churches were built, painted and used, showing how faith structured the rhythm of rural life. Symbols in the artworks are decoded, linking them to wider European traditions while keeping the focus firmly on the local parishes that commissioned and cared for them. The result is both an art-historical and social glimpse into a period when the church was the central institution in almost every community.

Runestones, storm surges and shifting coastlines

The museum’s foyer hosts two rune stones, including the Sædinge and Skovlænge stones, which immediately anchor the building in Denmark’s Viking and early medieval past. Their dense runic bands, interpreted on nearby labels, offer terse commemorations of people and relationships in a landscape of farms and waterways. Standing beside them, you sense how public messages and memorials once looked in stone rather than on screens. Upstairs, more recent history comes into focus, particularly the devastating storm surges and floods that have periodically struck Lolland. Maps, photographs and eyewitness accounts illustrate how the sea has advanced and retreated, swallowing fields and reshaping the coastline. Exhibits explore the human response: dykes, drainage projects and engineering schemes that turned marshland into some of Denmark’s most fertile farmland, while always under the shadow of the next big storm.

Exploring the building and practical details

The museum occupies three floors, though only the ground level – including the shop, tourist information point, Lola exhibition and OMG gallery – is step-free via a ramp at the entrance. Upper galleries are reached by wide staircases with handrails, reflecting the constraints of a 19th-century structure. Lighting varies from bright, open rooms to darker, sensor-controlled spaces where illumination follows you through the displays. Although the institution occasionally closes for seasonal breaks or refurbishment, when open it usually keeps daytime hours on weekdays with a slightly shorter Saturday. Admission is paid for adults, while children often enter free or at reduced rates, and a joint annual pass covers other Museum Lolland-Falster sites in Maribo and Nykøbing Falster. Combined with the museum’s location by the station and near the lakes, it makes an easy addition to a day exploring the town and its surroundings.