Museums in Germany

Romano-Germanic Museum

The Roman-Germanic Museum (Römisch-Germanisches Museum) has a large collection of Roman artifacts from the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, on which modern Cologne is built. The museum protects the original site of a Roman town villa, from which a large Dionysus mosaic remains in its original place in the basement, and the related Roman Road just outside. In this respect the museum is an ...
Founded: 1974 | Location: Cologne, Germany

Altes Museum

Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum, completed in 1830, is one of the most important buildings of the Neoclassical era. The monumental arrangement of 18 Ionic fluted columns, the expansive atrium and sweeping staircase that invites visitors to ascend to the top, the rotunda adorned with Antique sculptures on all sides as a place to collect one’s thoughts and an explicit reference to Rome’s Pantheon: s ...
Founded: 1823-1830 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Neues Museum

The Neues Museum ('New Museum') was built between 1843 and 1855 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The museum was closed at the beginning of World War II in 1939, and was heavily damaged during the bombing of Berlin. The rebuilding was overseen by the English architect David Chipperfield. Exhibits include the Egyptian and Prehistory and Early History collec ...
Founded: 1855 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Alte Nationalgalerie

The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) in Berlin is a gallery showing a collection of Neoclassical, Romantic, Biedermeier, Impressionist and early Modernist artwork. It is the original building of the National Gallery, whose holdings are now housed in several additional buildings. It is situated on Museum Island, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site. The idea of establishing a cultural and educational centre ...
Founded: 1861 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum was designed by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann and was constructed in twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. The Pergamon Museum houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus, all consisting of parts transported from Turkey. The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. T ...
Founded: 1910 | Location: Berlin, Germany

DDR Museum

The DDR Museum is an interactive museum located in the former governmental district of East Germany, right on the river Spree. Its exhibition shows the daily life in East Germany (known in German as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) in a direct 'hands-on' way. For example, a covert listening device gives visitors the sense of being 'under surveillance'. The museum was opened on July 15, 2006 ...
Founded: 2006 | Location: Berlin, Germany

German Tank Museum

The German Tank Museum is an armoured fighting vehicle museum in Munster, Germany, the location of the Munster Training Area camp (not to be confused with the city of Münster). Its main aim is the documentation of the history of German armoured troops since 1917. The museum displays tanks, military vehicles, weapons, small arms, uniforms, medals, decorations and military equipment from World War I to the present ...
Founded: 1983 | Location: Munster, Lower Saxony, Germany

Centre Charlemagne

Centre Charlemagne is the new museum of Aachen local history. It occupies the site on the Katschhof, the former palace courtyard. It focuses on a history of Aachen from the Neolithic to the present day. The key periods are the ancient Roman age (until 4th century AD), Charlemagne"s Aachen (the capital of Frankish Empire), the medieval period and Baroque period. The whole house is barrier-free.
Founded: 2014 | Location: Aachen, Germany

Haus der Kunst

The Haus der Kunst is a non-collecting art museum constructed from 1933 to 1937 following plans of architect Paul Ludwig Troost as the Third Reich's first monumental structure of Nazi architecture and as Nazi propaganda. The museum was opened in 1937 as a showcase for what the Third Reich regarded as Germany's finest art. The inaugural exhibition was the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung ('Great German art exhibition'), wh ...
Founded: 1933-1937 | Location: Munich, Germany

Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum is the world"s largest museum of science and technology, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association of German Engineers as an initiative of Oskar von Miller. The main site of the Deutsches Museum is a small island in the Isar river, which had ...
Founded: 1903 | Location: Munich, Germany

Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) is an outdoor and indoor history museum. It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era. The buildings that housed the Gestapo and SS headquarters were largely destro ...
Founded: 2010 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest Jewish Museums in Europe. In three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind, two millennia of German-Jewish history are on display in the permanent exhibition as well as in various changing exhibitions. German-Jewish history is documented in the collections, the library and the archive, in the computer terminals ...
Founded: 2001 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum houses the most extensive collection of medieval Cologne paintings, apart from the Old Pinakothek in Munich, as well as precious works from the time around 1500. Flemish and Dutch masters of the 16th to the 18th century, Rembrandt and Rubens included, are also represented as is a collection of German and French paintings from the beginnings of the modern era until 1900. The foundations for the muse ...
Founded: 19th century | Location: Cologne, Germany

Pinakothek der Moderne

The Pinakothek der Moderne is one of the world"s largest museums for modern and contemporary art. Designed by German architect Stephan Braunfels, the Pinakothek der Moderne was inaugurated in September 2002 after seven years of construction. In contrast to other cities Munich was not much affected by the Nazi regime"s banning of modern art as 'degenerate art,' since only a few modern paintings were al ...
Founded: 2002 | Location: Munich, Germany

Albrecht Dürer's House

Albrecht Dürer's House was the home of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer from 1509 to his death in 1528. The House lies in the extreme north-west of Nuremberg"s Altstadt, near the Kaiserburg section of the Nuremberg Castle and the Tiergärtnertor of Nuremberg"s city walls. The house was built around 1420. It has five stories; the bottom two have sandstone walls, while the upper stories are t ...
Founded: 1420 | Location: Nuremberg, Germany

Albertinum

The Albertinum was built between 1884 and 1887 by extending a former armoury, or arsenal, that had been constructed between 1559 and 1563 at the same location. The new building was designed by the regional master builder Carl Adolf Canzler in the Renaissance Revival style to house the royal Collection of Antique and Modern Sculptures. The building was named after the Saxonian King Albert who reigned at the time. In 1889 ...
Founded: 1884-1887 | Location: Dresden, Germany

Internationales Maritimes Museum

The Internationales Maritimes Museum houses Peter Tamm"s collection of model ships, construction plans, uniforms, and maritime art, amounting to over 40,000 items and more than one million photographs. It opened in a former warehouse in 2008.
Founded: 2008 | Location: Hamburg, Germany

Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History

The Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History (LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) houses an sprawling collection of art from the medieval to modern periods. Besides an extensive collection ranging from spätgotik painting and sculpture to the Cranachs, the museum specializes in paintings from the Der Blau Reiter and Die Brücke movements, in particular works by August Macke.
Founded: 1908 | Location: Münster, Germany

Alte Pinakothek

The Alte Pinakothek (Old Pinacotheca) is one of the oldest art museums in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings. The name Alte (Old) Pinakothek refers to the time period covered by the collection—from the 14th to the 18th century. The Neue Pinakothek covers 19th-century art, and the recently opened Pinakothek der Moderne exhibits modern art. All three galleries are part of the B ...
Founded: 1836 | Location: Munich, Germany

Kunsthalle Hamburg

The Hamburg Kunsthalle is one of the largest art museums in the Germany. The Kunsthalle has its origins in 1849. The collection grew quickly, and it soon became necessary to provide a building. The original red brick Kunsthalle was built from 1863 to 1869, designed by architects Georg Theodor Schirrmacher and Hermann von der Hude, and financed largely through private donations. The first director became the art historian ...
Founded: 1849 | Location: Hamburg, Germany

Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings

Historic Site of the week

Krickenbeck Castle

Krickenbeck moated castle is one of the oldest on the lower Rhine. Its history dates back to the year 1104, when the castle was first mentioned. It is unclear why the old castle, which was certainly inhabited by Count Reginar, was abandoned or destroyed. In the mid-13th century the castle was moved to the current location. At the end of the 14th century the new castle belonged to the Counts of Kleve.

Johann Friedrich II of Schesaberg converted the castle into a Baroque mansion between 1708-1721. On September 7, 1902, a fire destroyed the entire mansion. From 1903 to 1904, a three-winged castle was built in the Neo-Renaissance style. Today Krickenbeck is a conference center.