The Romanesque House in Bad Kösen was once part of a farmstead that had become the property of the Cistercian monastery transferred from Schmölln to Schulpforte as a gift from the Naumburg bishop Udo I. The farmstead was then used by the monastery as a place of residence. In 1138 Pope Innocenz II confirmed this farm to the monastery as grangia Cusne with all its possessions and tithes. Finally, between 1150 and 1175, the two-story Romanesque house was built of shell limestone and served the monastery and later Pforta State School for the following centuries as an economic building with stables, storage and living quarters.
In 1955, the museum was opened in the Romanesque House, which presents the history of the settlement and the monastery as well as the history of the Bad Kösen salt works. As an architectural monument on the Romanesque Road, the Romanesque House is today considered one of the oldest preserved stone buildings of a monastic external economy in central Germany.
In an adjacent building we show one of the largest exhibitions of Käthe Kruse dolls in the world in Käthe Kruse's doll world.