Discover Munich’s best museums: from the Reinassance to contemporary art
Munich has a lot of museums to discover. In the city you can find more than 80 museums and exhibitions. We have listed the most famous and our favorite ones.
Tip: Always consider visiting museums in Munich on Sundays because most museums only cost 1€!
Here our list of 21 amazing museums in Munich:
Alte Pinakothek
The Alte Pinakothek is among the biggest museum of the city. It encompasses over 700 artworks from the 14th to the 18th centuries. The collection includes works from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Baroque, through to the late Rococo period. In this museum you can find paintings by Dürer, Raphael, Leonardo, Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Boucher and their contemporaries.
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
The Bayerisches Nationalmuseum displays unique art from late antiquity up to art nouveau. The art showcased in this museum explains European cultural history in Bavaria in a unique way. The museum is one of the largest in Germany.
BMW Museum
The BMW Museum is famous for its futuristic architecture and insights into the present and future of mobility. The museum sets its focus on automotive innovation and history. Moreover, here you can discover more about the BMW brand and product history.
Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum is one of the biggest science museums in the world and one of the best museums in Munich. The museum is famous for being extremely interactive and educational. For this reason, it is the perfect destination for people of all ages. In the halls you can find planes, a floor with information about astronomy and space, parts of the museum which focus on chemistry and physics, light and how it works and much more.
Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum
In the Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum you can find three exhibition halls dedicated to urban transport, travel and mobility. The collection includes new and old transportation means, from racing cars to steam locomotives, from bicycles to the ICE high-speed trains.
Glyptothek
The Glyptothek in Munich is a museum of Greek and Roman art housed in a majestic neoclassical building. Ludwig I of Bavaria commissioned the museum and the construction took place between 1816 and 1830. The museum presents a rich collection of sculptures dating from 650 BC to 550 AD.
Haus der Kunst
With its exhibitions, performances and music events, the Haus der Kunst is a world-leading centre for contemporary art. The museum is not only committed to investigating the history and stories of contemporary art, but also sees it as its task to bring these stories to a wider public.
Jüdisches Museum München
To this day, the Jewish Museum is a place where Jewish history and the present meet. Here everyday stories are told and cultural histories are shown. Accordingly, the focus of the museum is on cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution and on researching everyday objects and objects of daily use as well as religious ritual objects.
Kunsthalle
The Kunsthalle is close to the main square hosts three major exhibitions each year. Differently from the other museums in Munich, there isn’t a permanent collection, the museum always covers different themes and art movements.
KUNSTLABOR 2
KUNSTLABOR 2 is a center for art and culture and Munich’s largest cultural temporary use project. Here you can roam through walk-in art spaces that over 100 artists have transformed into extraordinary art worlds. At Kunstlabor you can enjoy the works of local of contemporary artists as well as internationally renowned artists.
Lenbachhaus
The Lenbachhaus is a special museum, bringing together the works of artists who lived part of their lives in Munich in the 19th and 20th centuries. One – perhaps the most important – part of the Lenbachhaus collection is the extensive private collection of works by Vasily Kandinsky, donated in 1957 by the expressionist artist Gabriele Münter.
Museum Brandhorst
The Museum Brandhorst has three exhibition areas focusing on the work of Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly. It also contains works by some classic avant-garde artists, such as Pablo Picasso, post-war European modernists, such as Joseph Beuys or Mario Merz, and US artists, such as John Chamberlain.
Münchner Stadtmuseum
The Münchner Stadtmuseum captivatingly showcases Munich’s urban and cultural history in its diverse exhibitions. The extraordinarily rich collections include graphic art and paintings, advertising art, furniture and arts and crafts, but also toys and fashion. Museum Brandhorst.
Museum Fünf Kontinente
The Museum Fünf Kontinente is the largest ethnographic museum in Germany, after the one in Berlin. The current collection has about 150,000 items relating to the life and culture of non-European peoples. Of particular importance are exhibits from the Far East, South America and East and Central Africa.
Museum Villa Stuck
The Museum Villa Stuck is a beautiful villa in Bogenhausen designed and built by the painter Franz von Stuck. In 1968 it became a museum dedicated to Art Nouveau. The interior presents some of the artist’s paintings and retains the original layout while the wing of the studio is dedicated to temporary exhibitions.
MVG Museum
On 5,000 square meters, visitors to the MVG Museum can tour through 130 years of city history and the development of local public transport in Munich. Here you can admire past technologies, uniforms, accessories and historic vehicles. Among the highlights, a subway simulator that allows visitors to drive a subway.
MUCA
The MUCA is Germany’s first museum for urban art and impresses with top-class exhibitions by renowned artists of urban fine art. Here visitors can discover a great variety of this art genre on different levels, from the museum’s own collection to installations and the largest mural in Munich.
NS-Dokumentationszentrum München
The NS Documentation Centre commemorates the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship at the historical site and conveys the history of Nazism. In exhibitions, events, workshops and seminars the museum aims to counter racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination.
Paläontologisches Museum München
The Palaeontological Museum presents impressive displays of large fossils of various vertebrates and plants that illustrate the evolution and ecological adaptations of these groups. Here you can admire the largest Bavarian dinosaur and the last dinosaur, mammals of the Ice Age such as the mammoth, giant deer and sabre-toothed tiger, and in the centre the skeleton of the Mühldorf primeval elephant.
Pinakothek der Moderne
The symbol of Munich’s artistic quarter and the largest museum of modern art in Germany, the Pinakothek der Moderne houses a splendid collection of architectural, design and modern art works. The museum opened in 2002 and was designed by German architect Stephan Braunfels.
Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst
The museum concentrates on the art, and here especially on the circular sculpture, of ancient Egypt, with all epochs from prehistory through the classical periods of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms to the Late Period and the Greco-Roman period represented in high-quality monuments.
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