The story
Düsseldorf's art museum traces back to Jan Wellem, the pleasure-loving elector who ruled here around 1700 and gathered a famous picture collection, much of which later slipped away to Munich. What stayed and grew is now the Kunstpalast, set in a brick Art Deco complex from the 1920s around a courtyard near the Rhine.
The painting galleries centre on Rubens, with large altarpieces and a room of works by artists who served Jan Wellem's court. But the museum's most unusual treasure is made of glass. The Glasmuseum Hentrich, built on the collection of a local architect, holds thousands of glass objects from ancient Rome and the Middle Ages to Art Nouveau, one of the biggest such collections in Europe.
The modern rooms carry Düsseldorf's own 20th century, from the Junges Rheinland painters between the wars to the postwar Zero group who worked with light and movement.
