Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
A cast-iron building of 1872, a famous theatre next door and a difficult chapter of European history offer several ways into the museum’s story.
On this page
The Page Brothers Building
The museum is in the Page Brothers Building at the corner of State and Lake Streets, built in 1872, soon after the Great Chicago Fire, to a design by John Mills Van Osdel.
Its Lake Street front is the last remaining cast-iron front in the city. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1983.
A difficult history
The museum’s subject is the punishment of real people, often in public, across centuries of European history.
Some objects associated with the period, such as the iron maiden, are now thought by historians to be later inventions. The History page sets out what the sources say.
The museum
The Medieval Torture Museum opened in Chicago in November 2021. It shows more than 100 implements and devices across more than 6,000 square feet.
This history belongs to the people who lived it and to the building’s own past. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Wikipedia: Page Brothers Building
- Medieval Torture Museum: Chicago
- Time Out Chicago: a museum dedicated to medieval torture methods opens in the Loop (7 December 2021)
Links lead to the original publishers.
