Middelaldercentret

Middelaldercentret (English: The Medieval Centre) is an experimental living history archaeological open-air museum in Denmark, which depicts the Middle Ages in the Denmark of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. It is located in Sundby Lolland, some 4 km northwest of the centre of Nykøbing Falster on the waterfront of Guldborgsund.

It features a town built as part of a typical Danish market town with craftsmen, a harbour with ships and boats, and a market place. The employees are dressed in period costumes and live and work in the houses and do everyday activities such as craftmanship, cooking and weapon training. Furthermore, the museum has a variety of siege weapons of the period, such as trebuchets, a ballista and a cannon and smaller weapons such as handguns, longbows and crossbows. All of the items are built on site using period tools. Activities include live firing of the weapons daily, archery, knightly tournaments, and demonstrations of crafts and tasks from the late 14th century and early 15th centuries.

The employees are both permanent staff and unemployed people sent in job training from the municipality. In addition, a support association exists, from which a large group of volunteers participates in the daily work. All the involved people "live in the medieval period", which means that they do not know of modern things like television, cellphones and so on. The former curator of the centre was the historian, writer and lecturer Kåre Johannessen. By 2016, the curator was Thit Birk Petersen. In 2021 Roeland Paardekooper took over as director He left the position in December 2023 allegedly because he was dismissed. Poul Schreiner Hansen was installed as interim director after this.

Besides normal museum activities, the Middle Ages Centre does extensive research within the middle ages and different medieval technologies, and the museum has reconstructed weapons, ships, clothing and diving equipment among others. The museum has a reputation of being the most authentic place in Europe within the medieval period. Due to the authenticity the medieval town has been used as a setting for many movies, documentaries and TV series.

The Middle Ages Centre started with the reconstruction of a medieval siege weapon, called a trebuchet, built to mark the 700th anniversary of Nykøbing Falster in 1989. The local museum reconstructed the trebuchet and the experiment ran for three weeks in which 15000–30000 people visited the site. Given the considerable interest in the trebuchet, a scoping project, "Medieval Technology Centre", was conducted for two months in the summer of 1991. The project consisted of a series of workshops and a kitchen tent set up around the trebuchet. As a private institution, The Middle Ages Centre was founded in 1992. Two years later, in 1994, a donation from Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond (a non-profit foundation) made it possible to build an entire settlement with houses, tournament lists, a harbour, and a new entrance building. Since then, more houses have been built and one major new project is carried out each year.

In 2013 the museum opened a technology park where inventions and technologies from the medieval period have been built full size for the audience to try. Many of these have not been built before and have only been an idea on a paper and some would never work in reality such a perpetual motion machine and the world's first car built from a drawing from the Italian engineer Giovanni Fontana. In 2014 a new war wagon was introduced and added to the daily display of siege engines. It is made from a depiction from the manuscript Hausbuch at Schloss Wolfegg and is said to be the first tank in history.

In 2020 the museum opened a new attraction called Griffenholm which is an area with treetop houses with a steampunk like interior and elements from Jules Verne and Harry Potter where a fictional professor is investigating the area for mythical creatures from the middle ages. The area is mostly for schools but is also used for escape rooms.

Living history is central to The Middle Ages Centre and the focus is a Danish market town in the period around the year 1400. The centre follows the current calendar, but offset by 610 years – in 2014 the year 1404 is depicted and so on.