Should Kids Go to Medieval Torture Museums?

Whether gruesome scenes are right for your child’s age and nightmare level is a parental decision. But before your family travels to Europe this summer, there’s something you should know about these “museums” that have popped up in almost every city with a castle or a medieval past.

They’re 90 percent hokum, and not medieval. Nor are most of the “artifacts” real. A little history: The instruments of torture shown in lurid tableaus, if used at all, were rarely used until after the medieval period (about 500 to 1500).

And those gruesome machines in most of the “medieval” museums were manufactured in Victorian England for use in wax museums and to satisfy that era’s fascination with supposed medieval horrors. Not that that period didn’t have its cruelty, but torture machines were rarely part of it.

Most of the devices in torture museums are copies of those made by English blacksmiths in the mid-1800s, never intended for use and often only loosely based on actual historical objects. Some are pure fabrications, including the “chastity belt,” which never existed in reality, and the Iron Maiden, for which no mention exists prior to the 1700s and without any evidence of its actual existence. In any case, it would have been useless in obtaining information or a confession, the historic reason for torture.

Add the general cheesiness of the mannequins and recorded bone crunching and screams of anguish and you have a wholly made-for-tourists “experience.”

That’s not to say all castles’ depictions of early prisons are false. Tower of London features an exhibit documenting torture that actually took place there in the late 1500s and 1600s. Another example of accurate depiction is at Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg, Germany, where exhibits relate to all areas of medieval criminal justice, including punishment and torture.

The temptation to add a torture museum or torture chamber to a medieval tourist attraction is understandable. Historic sites try to attract younger audiences, and nothing screams out louder to a teenager or tweenager than the prospect of something gruesome and scary.

So, if you give in and spend money to indulge the kids’ curiosity, you can at least add a little historical perspective to what they’ll see.