The museum is housed in the so-called Seifensiederhaus (literally: soap-boiler house), one of the oldest buildings in Leopoldstadt (Vienna's second district). It was rebuilt in 1685, shortly after the Turkish Siege.

Reports of murders from the Middle Ages to the present day are prominently presented: from the illustrated slates of street ballad singers to the leaflets containing biographies of famous criminals to the newspaper reports of today.

Political criminality in Austria, ranging from the bourgeois attempts at coups in the nineteenth century to assassination attempts on the Imperial family, the assassination of Minister of War Latour and anarchic attacks to the kidnapping of the industrialist Palmers; all of this and the development of the police and its methods is documented in the museum.

Photos from murder scenes, court protocols and relics of executed criminals make the museum an unusual memorial for death as well. The old Viennese Café in the interior courtyard of the building offers a friendly contrast to all of this.

Object labels mostly in German.