Fine Arts Museum - Strasbourg

A walk through paintings, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The Fine Arts Museum was founded in 1880. Wilhelm Bode, curator in chief of the Berlin Museums, was asked to reconstitute the collections destroyed when the “Aubette” was burned down in 1870. Until 1914, Italian, Flemish and Dutch paintings were favored over French and German ones. The collections grew after 1919, under the guidance of H. Haug and his successors, with a notable increase in the number of French works. Unfortunately two disasters wreaked havoc on the palace: the building and the collections were seriously damaged when the Americans bombed the City in 1944 and the fire of 1947 destroyed several famous paintings. The priority today is given to the acquisition of French paintings ( 17th and 18th centuries), still poorly represented. The addition of the Kaufmann and Schlageter collection has drastically transformed the collections.