Germany Guide
North Rhine-Westphalia
The Wallraf-Richartz Museum
Address: Rathausplatz
Opening time: Tues, Wed & Fri 10am–6pm, Thurs 10am–10pm, Sat & Sun 11am–6pm
Price: €6–9 depending on exhibitions
The south side of Rathausplatz is dominated by the clean modern lines of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum/Fondation Corboud , beautifully laid out and curated in such a way that it offers a coherent lesson in art history. It has an important collection of medieval Cologne art, Flemish and Dutch masters, and French and German art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Medieval highlights include Stefan Lochner's Virgin in the Rose Bower (c.1440–42), as well as works by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder, and the depiction of the legend of St Ursula in fifteen paintings on wood by the Kölnischer Meister of 1456. Rubens' gory Juno and Argus of 1610 is one of the highlights of the second floor, where you can also see Van Dyck's Jupiter as Satyr with Antiope from 1620 and a late Rembrandt self-portrait among a considerable trove of Flemish and Dutch masters. The top floor's highlights include some typically symbolic works by Caspar David Friedrich, Wilhelm Leibl's lovely Girl at a Window of 1899 and The Lady of Frankfurt by Leibl's French contemporary and associate, Gustave Courbet. Other works include Max Liebermann's The Bleaching Ground and several Impressionists, including a 1915 Monet Water Lilies that is already well on the way to abstraction.