The Romanesque house in Bad Kösen was once part of a farmstead that was donated to the Cistercian monastery of Schulpforte by Bishop Udo I of Naumburg. Constructed from shell limestone between 1150 and 1175, the building served the monastery and later the Pforta country school as a farm building with stables, storage and living quarters for the following centuries. As an architectural monument on the Romanesque Road, the Romanesque House is today one of the oldest preserved stone buildings of a monastic outlying farm in Central Germany. Since 1955, the Romanesque House has housed a museum on the history of Bad Kösen and the surrounding area. An exhibition on the world-famous doll designer Käthe Kruse (1883-1968) is housed in the same building complex. Changing exhibitions on cultural-historical themes and an exhibition on the Kösen toy factory PEBE, the manufacturer of plastic construction sets and toys in the GDR, round off the exhibition offer.