The Städel Museum’s huge collection of art spans 700 years of history. See more than 2,900 paintings, 600 sculptures and 500 photographs. One of the oldest museums in Germany, Städel was founded based on the will of a wealthy Frankfurt banker, Johann Friedrich Städel. Städel’s own paintings formed the basis of the collection in 1815.
Today the fine art museum is split into three main areas that cover Old Masters, Modern Art and Contemporary Art. Wear a comfortable pair of walking shoes and give yourself a number of hours to explore the extensive collections in detail. The Modern Art collection is the largest of the three.
See masterpieces from 1300 to 1800 in the Old Masters section. Artworks are displayed in chronological order. Notice how largely religious subjects become more secular later on. You’ll see more portraits and landscapes in the latter half of the collection. Look out for Portrait of a Young Woman by Albrecht Dürer, a 15th-century German painter. Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting Ecce Homo is another highlight.
There are many works by Pablo Picasso in the Modern Art section, which focuses on art from 1800 to the end of World War II. See Picasso’s abstract painting Fernande Olivier, among others. A large focus of the Modern Art collection is on German and French painters from the early 1900s, although there are also many historic photographs. Explore entire rooms dedicated to famous German modernists Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Move from classic modern art to challenging contemporary works in the Contemporary Art section. See pieces by Gerard Richter and Jackson Pollock among the comprehensive collection of art from 1945 to today.
The Städel Museum is part of the Museum Embankment, which is an area where you will find a large concentration of Frankfurt’s cultural institutions. Get there by U-Bahn and tram. If you come by car, pay to park in one of two garages within walking distance of the museum.
The museum is closed on Mondays. Come during the week when the admission price is halved.
