Bata Shoe Museum

Visiting the Bata Shoe Museum

During your visit to the Bata Shoe Museum, delve into one of the world’s most diverse and extensive collections of shoes as you explore the footwear museum’s main exhibitions comprised of one semi-permanent and three changing exhibitions. The Bata Museum Shop, stocked with footwear-themed souvenirs, gifts and books is sure to delight shoe lovers of all ages.

The Bata Shoe Museum Collection

Since the 1940s, Mrs. Bata has traveled the world looking for shoes of every description from the most ordinary to the most extraordinary. Expanding over the years, the museum’s collection now numbers over 12,500 artifacts from many geographic areas, time periods and cultural groups. With around 100 items of footwear on display in the museum at a time, there is much to explore.

Exhibitions

All About Shoes

Start your visit to the Bata Shoe Museum in All About Shoes, the museum’s main exhibition. In All About Shoes, journey through 4,500 years of footwear history and learn about the evolution of footwear, its uses over time, methods and materials used by the manufacture and its place in our lives and imaginations. In the exhibition’s Fashion Afoot display, see how shoes changed decade by decade in response to design, politics and social change. What’s Their Line? offers an in-depth look at footwear with a purpose from chestnut crushing clogs from France to sumo wrestlers’ geta from Japan.

Footprints on the World Stage

Delight in an impressive array of footwear worn by the performers, athletes, politicians and artists who have inspired us. Footprints of the World Stage showcases footwear worn by icons such as Pierre Trudeau, Madonna, Roger Federer, Napoleon and Marilyn Monroe.

Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native North American Footwear

Beautifully crafted examples of footwear worn by the Indigenous peoples from diverse regions of North America are featured in the Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native North American Footwear exhibition. Discover 90 different pairs of shoes, boots and moccasins that showcase ingenious craftsmanship, regional patterns, and beautiful decoration from Cherokee moccasins from 1840, to Lakota moccasins of the late 19th century.

Collected in the Field

Collected in the Field highlights the history of shoemaking traditions, many of which have started to disappear over the years. Learn from the voices of the makers and see the images of their processes. You will be amazed by the diversity of traditional footwear that reflects world cultures. Features in the exhibition include Maasai sandals, flat-soled Dutch clogs and Mongolian boots worn by Dondoghulam, the first consort of the last ruler of Mongolia, Bogd Javzandamba Agvaanluvsan the 8th.

Shopping in the Museum Shop

Bata Shoe Museum Shop is a dream come true for all shoe lovers. Stocked with a large selection of shoe-related items such as books, ornaments, gifts, paper goods, t-shirts, key rings and jewelry, the Museum Shop is sure to have the gift or keepsake you are looking for.

Travel Tips

- In addition to its main exhibitions, keep an eye out for the Bata Shoe Museum’s “Snapshot” exhibits. Usually on display in the lobby and/or lower level of the museum, these ever-changing, small-scale themed displays consist of three to ten display cases and feature items from the museum’s collection, or loaned items.

- Ask Bata Shoe Museum employees for information on nearby cafés and restaurants.