Bavarian National Museum

Major Munich museum for European decorative arts and folk culture, celebrated for its world-famous nativity scene collection.

The Bavarian National Museum on Munich's Prinzregentenstraße is one of Europe's most important museums of decorative arts. Across some 13,000 m² of exhibition space, it presents art and cultural-history collections from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century: European sculpture, textiles, ceramics and glasswork. It is especially known for its folklore department in the basement, home to one of the world's largest nativity scene collections. The building itself, founded in 1855 and opened in its current form in 1900, is a grand historicist structure whose façades cycle through styles from Romanesque to Renaissance.