The Musée historique de Mulhouse is a municipal history museum and archaeology museum in Mulhouse. It is housed since 1969 in Mulhouse's Old Town Hall, a Northern Renaissance building dating mainly from 1552.
The interiors of the Old Town Hall with their intact original decoration are an integral part of the museum. The museum's medieval sculptures are on display in the neighbouring Museum of Fine Arts, such as a Saint George Slaying the Dragon from 1490, originally from Tyrol. That work, as well as many others, is on permanent loan to the municipal collections of Mulhouse by the Société industrielle de Mulhouse (SIM), a learned society established in 1826 by local industrialists such as Dollfus, Koechlin, and Schlumberger which had begun collecting artworks in 1831.
The Jan Hus Memorial stands at one end of Old Town Square. The huge monument depicts victorious Hussite warriors and Protestants who were forced into exile 200 years after Hus, and a young mother who symbolises national rebirth. The monument was so large that the sculptor designed and built his own villa and studio where the work could be carried out. It was unveiled in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus' martyrdom. The memorial was designed by Ladislav Šaloun and paid for solely by public donations.
Born in 1369, Hus became an influential religious thinker, philosopher, and reformer in Prague. He was a key predecessor to the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century. In his works he criticized religious moral decay of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the Czech patriot Hus believed that mass should be given in the vernacular, or local language, rather than in Latin. He was inspired by the teachings of John Wycliffe.