Germany Guide
Northern Bavaria: Franconia
Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Address: Kartäusergasse 1
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–6pm, Wed until 9pm
Price: €6, English audio guide €1.50
Website: www.gnm.de
The giant among Nuremberg's museums – and the largest museum of its kind in Germany – the Germanisches Nationalmuseum was founded in 1852 by a Franconian nobleman, Hans Freiherr von und zu Aufsess. The impetus for its establishment was to provide cultural affirmation of the liberal ideal of the nation state at a time when Germany was still a mass of competing kingdoms, dukedoms and landgraviates. The architectural core of the complex is an old Carthusian monastery and its cloisters, but what first strikes visitors is the crisp modernity of the 1993 Museumsforum and the monumental Street of Human Rights, a row of white concrete columns inscribed in various languages, by Israeli artist Dani Karavan. The sheer scale of the museum can be daunting: the medieval collections and fine art aside, there's a hangar-like room full of historic musical instruments and entire farmhouse interiors have been reconstructed in the folk art section. It pays, therefore, to be selective. Among the highlights of the prehistoric section is the gorgeously delicate, wafer-thin Ezelsdorf-Buch Gold Cone, which dates from some time between 1100 and 900 BC. Highlights of the medieval collections include sculptures by Veit Stoss and the Thuringian-born but Würzburg-based Tilman Riemenschneider, while the star among the scientific instruments is undoubtedly the Behaim Globe, which dates from 1491–93 and is the oldest existing representation of the Earth as a sphere. The glory of Nuremberg's metalworking tradition is admirably demonstrated by the splendidly ornamental Schlüsselfelder Schiff, a table centrepiece of a sailing ship from 1503, while its greatest artist, Albrecht Dürer, is represented here by seven paintings. Twentieth-century paintings include an Expressionist self-portrait by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.