Top 10 Art Galleries to Visit in Germany

There are several cities in Germany with museum islands, but none are as expansive as Berlin’s, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Altes Museum covers Greek and other antiquities; the Neues Museum has the bust of Nefertiti and other Egypt-related artifacts; the Alte Nationalgalerie contains Western art from roughly 1850-1950; the Bode covers sculpture and Byzantine art and the Pergamon antiquity, the Middle East and Islamic art.

Small, but perfectly formed, the Wallraf Museum in Cologne is an antidote to hit and miss contemporary galleries or endurance-testing leviathans typical of most city centres. It’s about 5 minutes walk from the Cologne Cathedral, contains an excellent cafe and is kitty corner to the Farina Fragrance Museum.

The Neues Museum Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design is a mouthful, but there’s no doubt what you’ll find there. (Hint: it’s contemporary art and design). Opened in 2000, the galleries are laid out in a spiral, like a snail shell. A fine collection of work by German painter Gerhard Richter is especially worthwhile, as is the sculpture garden.

The 200 year old Städel Museum, officially Die Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, has 2,700 paintings, 100,000 drawings, 600 sculptures and 100,000 books, making it the perfect respite from a rainy day in Frankfurt. During the war, all the art was moved to Bavaria for safekeeping and only discovered after the fact by one of the Monuments Men.

If Surrealism brings only Dali to mind, then get acquainted with the German painter who got there first. Max Ernst developed a love of defying authority as the child of a strict, Catholic father. Later in life, he sold many of his paintings to one collector in order to fund a move to Saigon with his lover and her husband. In addition to the Ernst collection, the museum has regular exhibitions of modern artist like M.C. Escher, Man Ray or Tim Burton.