Europe > Germany > Stuttgart Tram Museum

Straßenbahmuseum Stuttgart

Stuttgart Tram Museum
Bad Canstatt, Stuttgart, Germany

ABOVE: Meter-gauge trams in the Stuttgart Tram Museum, which occupies a former streetcar depot in Stuttgart's Bad Canstatt district.

By Durant Imboden

Stuttgart and Straßenbahn share more than an initial consonant: Stuttgart was the first German city with a streetcar network, thanks to the introduction of horsedrawn trolleys in 1868. A cogwheel railway opened in 1884, and in 1891, Stuttgart followed Berlin and Hamburg by introducing the third electric tram system in Germany.

Since then, the city's streetcar network has continued to flourish, to the point where the entire meter-gauge system was replaced by a modern standard-gauge network in December, 2007. (Stuttgart's willingness to invest in public transit is all the more impressive for taking place in the headquarters city of two car companies.)

Stuttgart is a city that takes pride in its industrial history, and the Straßenbahnmuseum Stuttgart or Stuttgart Tram Museum has an extensive collection of trams, buses, and related objects that date back nearly 150 years.

The museum's parent organization, Stuttgarter Historische Straßenbahnen e.V., works closely with the local SSB transit authority. The SSB, in turn, provides the museum with 3,000 square meters of exhibition space at a former streetcar barn in the district of Bad Canstatt.

The museum has more than 60 restored trams and other vehicles, and it runs excursions on meter-gauge tracks that have been laid between the city's new standard-gauge tram lines.

ABOVE: A panoramic glimpse of the museum's collection, which includes more than 60 streetcars and other vehicles.

Visitor information

The last time we checked, the museum was open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a few exceptions (such as Christmas and New Year's Day) and rare special openings. For up-to-date information on opening hours and ticket prices in German, see the SSB's Streetcar Museum pages.

Tram excursions

On Sundays, the museum runs "old-timer trips" on vintage streetcars and buses. For details, click the link above and see the "Oldtimerfahrten mit der Linie 23" schedule and ticket prices.

Next page: More photos

About the author:

Durant Imboden is a professional travel writer, book author, and editor who focuses on European cities and transportation.

After 4-1/2 years of covering European travel topics for About.com, Durant and Cheryl Imboden co-founded Europe for Visitors (now including Germany for Visitors) in 2001. The site has earned "Best of the Web" honors from Forbes and The Washington Post.

For more information, see About Europe for Visitors, press clippings, and reader testimonials.

|  Germany for Visitors - Home  |

|  Europe for Visitors - Home  |

|  About us   |

|  Contact information  |

|  Press clippings  |

|  Testimonials  |

|  Privacy and cookies   |

Disclosure:

Where hotel or other reservation links point to third-party booking sites, we may receive a small commission on transactions. This will not affect the rate you pay.

Copyright © 1996-2025 Durant and Cheryl Imboden. All rights reserved.