Moesgaard Museum was previously called the Forhistorisk (Prehistoric) Museum. Since 1968, the museum has been housed at the Moesgaard manor house, seven km south of Århus.
It is a museum of local history and a speciality museum in the areas of archaeology and ethnography, operating in collaboration with the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, Medieval Archaeology, Ethnography and Social Anthropology at the University of Aarhus. Moesgaard Museum contains archaeological collections from Denmark and from excavations carried out in Bahrain and other places in the Persian Gulf region.

Of particular interest in the Danish collections are the Mesolithic Ertebølle culture finds from Ringkloster and Tybrind Vig, the Neolithic finds from Tustrup and Sarup, the early Iron Age bog man discovered at Grauballe, the bronze vat from Brå, the sacrificial weapon find from Illerup Ådal (dated to the fifth or sixth century), the Viking Age finds from the Århus city centre and the rune stones.
The primary focus of the ethnographic collections is on research travels in the Middle East, primarily in Afghanistan, and in South and Southeast Asia.

In addition to the permanent exhibition, there is a park containing reconstructions of prehistoric dwellings and graves, replicas of houses from the Iron Age and the Viking Age and a replica of a stave church from Hørning, near the town of Randers.

Moesgaard Manor is known from the sixteenth century and was owned during the period 1662-1822 by the Marselis family (ennobled as the Gyldenkrones). The present-day Neoclassical manor house with its curved side wings was built in 1776-78 by C. J. Zuber for Baron Christian Frederik Gyldenkrone (1741-88). In 1960, Moesgaard was acquired by the County of Århus, which transferred the estate to the Forhistorisk Museum in 1966. The nearby water mill, Moesgård Skovmølle, has been converted into a restaurant.