Museum Map
13 halls, the Foundations Annex, 160 exhibits — one continuous story: how humanity learned to keep secrets
Suggested route: Start in Hall I (Ancient) and walk forward through time. Each hall builds on what came before — substitution leads to polyalphabetic, which leads to machines, which leads to the one cipher that can never be broken. End at Modern Cryptography to see where every classical failure led.
Trust Labels
Every cipher exhibit carries one of four labels indicating its modern security status. Click a label on any exhibit to return here.
Historically important and well-studied, but cryptographically broken. Use only for learning — never for real secrets.
Curiosities, primitive shifts, undeciphered manuscripts, and steganographic devices. Important to the story of cryptography; never serious modern security.
Useful for teaching a specific cryptographic concept (substitution, fractionation, key reuse) but not intended for security. Reserved for explicitly didactic constructions.
Still considered secure when used correctly with modern key handling — AES, RSA, SHA-256, Diffie–Hellman, and the one classical cipher that survives: the one-time pad.
The Building
Click any hall or exhibit to enter. Your last-visited hall is highlighted.
Complete Cipher Index
The 140 cipher exhibits, organized by hall — the annex continues at §141–157.
Continue to §141–157 · Hall of Foundations — the mathematics under the cryptography →