St-Anne's Museum in Lübeck on the Baltic Sea

12/10/2019

Culture ■
If you haven’t yet planned a city trip for the coming months and you like history and art, I recommend you go to Lübeck in Germany on the Baltic Sea and visit the St-Anne's Museum.

BY HANAN, 3 minutes read

The city itself is worth spending a few days in, since the old city centre is fully UNESCO World Heritage. The Holsten Gate, built in 1477, one of the entrances to the old city centre, is already very impressive.

St-Anne's Museum

If you are in this beautiful city, then definitely visit the St-Anne's Museum and experience how people lived in Lübeck, what they ate for dinner, how they were dressed and how the city looked during the Middle Ages. This museum is considered to be one of the most beautiful museums in Germany. It is located in the former St-Anne’s Monastery, which was founded in 1502 as a residence for the unmarried daughters of the wealthy merchants in Lübeck.

Most of the collection that you can see in the museum was collected between 1815 and 1915. In 1915 it was finally able to find a place in the monastery. Fortunately, everything was preserved during the Second World War, because parts of the city were destroyed with fire bombs. About 25% of the city burned out. The museum remained intact.

St-Anne's Museum.

Nowhere else did I ever see a museum with such harmony between the late Gothic monastery architecture and a unique collection of sacred art from the 13th to the early 16th century. The majority of the works come from Lübeck and testify about the important role that the city played as a meeting place for art and art production.

Hans Memling

One of the pieces from the museum's valuable collection is the 'Triptych with the Passion' from 1491, which Hans Memling painted for the altar in the chapel of the Greverade family in the Lübeck cathedral. As the only work in Memling's oeuvre, the altarpiece has double shutters. This means that the altarpiece has two pairs of shutters so that it can be displayed in three different ways. Memling is regarded as one of the prominent figures of Old Dutch painting better known as the Flemish Primitives and was at one point also based in Bruges.

'Triptych with the Passion' from Hans Memling.

Middle Ages

In addition to the most extensive collection of medieval carved altars, this museum also houses furniture, paintings and crafts that were part of the town houses in Lübeck and this gives a very nice impression of the living culture from the 16th to the end of the 18th century. If you sneak through this museum it looks like the Middle Ages in Lübeck are coming back to life.

Have you ever thought about visiting Lübeck and the St-Anne's Museum? If not, I higly recommend it. Trust me, it's definitely worth the trip. Lübeck is a beautiful city, and the St-Anne's Museum is an absolute gem. You won't be disappointed if you decide to go there. So why not plan a visit and explore all the history and culture that Lübeck has to offer? It's an experience you won't forget.