Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The Alte Pinakothek is a major art museum, and its long brick building was designed by Leo von Klenze for paintings spanning the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. It opened in 1836 and belongs to Bavaria’s State Painting Collections. The building’s unusual importance lies in treating a museum as a purpose-built gallery rather than as a palace: its design incorporated skylights to illuminate the picture rooms, and it became a model for galleries beyond Germany.

Construction ran from 1826 to 1836. Look at the masonry and the broad, restrained façade: this is not simply an old shell, but a building whose structure was shaped around preserving and displaying paintings. War damage nearly destroyed it.

Bombing left a 45-metre breach through the building, and the exhibition rooms and staircases were burned out. Hans Döllgast led the rebuilding from 1952 to 1957, deliberately leaving the difference between surviving masonry and new work visible instead of disguising the damage. That decision gives the museum a striking dialogue between age and repair.

Inside, the collection reaches from medieval art through the mid-eighteenth century, with major works by artists including Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and El Greco. The building itself is the lasting story: a pioneering gallery reshaped by destruction, with its scars made part of its architecture.