Body Worlds

About Body Worlds

Body Worlds (German title: Körperwelten) is a traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts that are prepared using a technique called plastination to reveal inner anatomical structures. The exhibition's developer and promoter is a German anatomist named Gunther von Hagens, who invented the plastination technique in the late 1970s.

The exhibition, first presented in Tokyo in 1995, has been shown in many cities in Europe and Asia. Body Worlds 2, a second exhibition along similar lines but with different exhibits, opened in 2005 at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. A third exhibition, Body Worlds 3, opened on February 25, 2006, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Body Worlds 4 debuted February 22, 2008 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in England.

More than 25 million people have seen one of the Body Worlds exhibits.