Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg

The Kurpfälzisches Museum (the Palatinate Museum) in Heidelberg holds some of the finest archaeological artefacts and applied-art collections in southwest Germany. Paintings, sculptures, prints, watercolours, and a 600,000-year-old jawbone all live under one roof.

The building and its history

The museum occupies the Morass Palace, named after its first owner, the attorney Johann Philipp von Morass, briefly the rector of Heidelberg University in 1700-1701.

Von Morass commissioned the renowned baroque architect Johann Adam Breunig to build the palace on the site of the former Elende Herberge (Hotel of Woes), a hospital for the poor since 1693.

In the mid-1870s, Heidelberg city authorities purchased the art and antiquities collected by Count Charles de Graimberg - the seed of the museum's collection. The Kurpfälzisches Museum was founded around it. In 1906 the collection moved into the Morass Palace, where it has remained ever since.

The graphic arts collection

Considered the jewel in the crown of all graphic-arts collections in southwest Germany. More than 7,000 sketches and watercolours and more than 13,000 prints. Date range: late 8th century through the 20th.

The Romanticism section is particularly strong, including:

• Andreas Achenbach
• Philipp Otto Runge
• Anselm Feuerbach
• Eugen von Guérard
• Christian Ezdorf
• Carl Friedrich Lessing

The collection also holds many unique items and memorabilia commemorating Heidelberg itself.

The sculpture collection

Items from the mid-12th century through to modern times. Especially well-known for early 17th-century baroque statuaries collected from houses in Heidelberg's old town - the narrow strip of land beneath the Heidelberg Castle ruin on the Neckar's left bank.

The two standout pieces

• The Altar of the Apostles (1509) by Tilman Riemenschneider.
• Rückblickende (Retrospective), a profoundly evocative cast-stone statue of a woman on foot, hesitating, then turning to look back. For many visitors she represents Lot's wife at the moment before she was turned into a pillar of salt.

The collection also includes gravestones from a now-defunct Augustine monastery, plus sculptures from Heidelberg's old bridge across the Neckar - of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom (because building the bridge was very wise) and of Prince-Elector Charles Theodore (the ruler responsible for the building).

The applied arts collection

Many rooms in the palace. Four are dedicated to a recreation of the 18th- and 19th-century "feel", furnished to represent the period.

What you'll see:

• Family costumes from the mid 18th century to just before Hitler's rise.
• Furniture of the period.
• Bric-à-brac and curios: cutlery, glassware, medallions, coins, buttons.
• Porcelain, especially Frankenthal porcelain - one of the premier porcelain manufacturers in late-18th-century Germany.
• Portraits of select Prince-Electors and Countess Palatine Elisabeth Auguste's household silver.

The paintings collection

Spans the 15th through the 20th centuries.

Local figures

Particularly Perkeo - the dwarf and favourite court jester of Charles III Philip, Elector Palatine in Heidelberg. As official guardian of the Great Heidelberg Tun (a wine barrel originally holding more than 221,000 litres), Perkeo became Heidelberg's unofficial mascot.

Also Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess of the Palatinate.

Old masters

Works by the Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden and the German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Many Dutch still lifes. Numerous rococo paintings.

19th-century German painters

Carl Rottmann (landscape), Anselm Feuerbach (classicism), Wilhelm Trübner (realism).

20th-century painters

• Alexander Kanoldt - magic realist, important in the New Objectivity school. Two of his more distinguished works are The Red Belt and Still Life II.
• Alexei Jawlensky - Russian expressionist whose 1905 self-portrait and Young Girl in a Flowered Hat stand out. His synthesis of post-impressionist principles (Verkade, Sérusier) with rich Kandinsky-style colour is on full display.
• Max Beckmann - post-expressionist, also a proponent of New Objectivity. His 1940 Self-Portrait with Horn is justifiably popular, as are The Night and the triptych Carnival.

The archaeological collection

Seven rooms on the ground floor trace Heidelberg's history from about 600,000 years ago through modern times. Naturally, an entire room is given over to the Romans.

The Heiligenberg

The next most popular section. A low sandstone mountain east of Heidelberg, atop which sit the ruins of an early Romanesque church and two monasteries: the Monastery of St. Michael (1023 AD) and the Monastery of St. Stephen (1094 AD). The mountain is about 440 m above sea level. The so-called philosopher's way leads up about two kilometres.

If you plan to explore, watch for:

• Remains of a Celtic fort.
• The Heidenloch - a 55-metre-deep pit.
• The Heiligenberg Tower, built as a lookout from the stones of the razed Monastery of St. Stephen.
• The Bismarck Tower, a 1903 monument to Otto von Bismarck.
• The Thingstätte - an open-air theatre built by the Nazis in 1935. The intent was a gathering place for entertainment, neighbourly exchange, and government propaganda. 400 were planned, only 40 were built.

Artefacts from the Dark Ages round out the section.

Directions and opening hours

The Morass Palace (Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg) is at Hauptstraße 97, 69117 Heidelberg.

Telephone: 06221 58-34020.

Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 to 18:00. Closed on 24, 25, and 31 December, 1 January, Shrove Tuesday, and 1 May.

Entry fees vary by criteria - see the museum's website for the current fee list.