About this place
Facing the castle across the broad Alter Garten square, the State Museum rises like a Greek temple in the middle of a northern German city, its columned portico and pale historicist facade the product of grand-ducal ambition. Opened in 1882 by Grand Duke Frederick Francis the Second and paid for with reparations from the Franco-Prussian War, it was conceived from the outset as a purpose-built gallery, with careful lighting, heating and fireproofing that made it a technically modern building for its age. Inside hangs the treasure the dukes had been assembling for generations: one of Germany's most important collections of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting, medieval altarpieces, Furstenberg porcelain, and a stable of life-size animal portraits by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Oudry. Its most beloved resident is Clara, a rhinoceros who toured Europe as a celebrity in the 1740s and now gazes out, larger than life, from Oudry's enormous canvas.
Key facts
- 1882 year — The purpose-built gallery opened on the Alter Garten, financed by Franco-Prussian War reparations
- 456 cm — The width of Oudry's life-size portrait of Clara the celebrity rhinoceros
- 90 works — By Marcel Duchamp, one of the most significant collections of the artist in Europe
📍 Alter Garten 3, 19055, Schwerin