Starting off with the earliest origins of 'Chasella' in 913, the city museum does an excellent job of showing visitors how Kassel developed over the ages. The ground floor has lovely drawings of the 1930s old town area, and models of the fine timber-framed houses that used to cram along the streets. A slightly less cheery but no less impressive highlight of the museum is the large model showing the ruined city centre after the Allied bombing raid of 22 October 1943. Targeting the old town and the neighbouring Henschel factories, 486 planes dropped over 19000 firebombs onto Kassel during the 20-minute raid, resulting in a firestorm that destroyed 78% of the city and killed an estimated 10,000 people. Local authorities had only built shelters for 5% of the population. Note that captions are in German only, but what was that quote about pictures saying words...