Dusseldorf is known to be a charming and picturesque town in Germany. It is A destination that offers its stunning beauty and many museums in Dusseldorf to explore. History and art enthusiasts travelers will enjoy and be in glee to tour and explore then for the blessing of art galleries across the town.
Germany has many museums, and there are many to discover in Dusseldorf! A wonderful historical and art travel adventure awaits in this town.
To experience such a travel experience will be unforgettable! Checking each of the museums it has is like opening various treasure boxes waiting to be discovered.
If you’re into such an adventure and planning a trip to Germany, adding Dusseldorf to your itinerary is necessary. Dive into Dusseldorf’s best museums to explore!
Best Museums in Düsseldorf, Germany
Filmmuseum Düsseldorf
Address: Schulstraße 4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Filmmuseum Düsseldorf is a film or movie museum, including collections of early history technical equipment of cinematography, props, costumes, decorations, cameras, set models, filming devices, etc.
The knowledge of film production, performance practices, distribution, and show strategies is presented before the museum’s visions. The museum also has a section dedicated to animated movies and animation technology.
This, therefore, implies that in a bid to preserve ancient filmmaking history, the museum continues to keep in contact with modern and new developments reflecting the film industry.
Temporary special exhibitions in the museum particularly reflect various German topics on film history relatedness and other international nations.
The museum in 1983 moved to Wilhelm-Marx’s first-floor deck at Kasernenstrasse 6 when Klaus G. Jaeger was still the director of the museum. The museum’s special exhibitions are usually themed or come with names.
The film museum is dedicated to four things: collecting and storing film and its related items, creating accessibility and presenting the holdings to the public through exhibitions and organization of seminars/workshops, and supporting filmmakers from within Düsseldorf.
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Maritime Museum
Address: Burgpl. 30, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
A maritime museum or nautical museum specializes in exhibiting objects relating to ships and other water travel mediums. This museum, as the name goes, and as the knowledge had earlier been established, specializes in displaying items related to the profession or occupation of transportation by water bodies.
Collections in the museum include a historic ship, ship models, and many other miscellaneous little objects relating to ship and shipping, such as uniforms for ship workers, cutlery, etc.
For the museum, these objects are constantly monitored to ensure that in preserving Cologne’s history of maritime (which, of course, stands for varying reasons), they are also maintained properly so that they appear as they used to be in the time of their prevalence. The museum welcomes a whooping sum of visitors to it annually.
These visitors come in for varying purposes: some for recreation of times, others to aid their research on courses relating to maritime. Good enough, the museum staff is always on the go to educate visitors on the working principles of some of the ships and other basic knowledge that may be required for the given field of research.
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Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf
Address: Berger Allee 2, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf (English: The City Museum Düsseldorf) is an urbanized history museum located in Berger, in the North Rhine-Westphalian state capital of Düsseldorf, Germany. The museum stands by the southern edge of the city’s heart in the historical Palais Spee in Carlstadt.
The museum was established in 1874 by the city council in the Hondheim Palace (or Palais Hondheim) on Akademiestrasses. The basis upon which movements began for the museum’s creation was based on the oil painting donations from Count von Stutterheim.
In November 1879, the museum moved into the gallery building of the majestic palace on Burgplatz. A section with the name “war collection” was built in 1914. From the year 1927 was housed in the location where the Museum of Applied Arts used to be in Friedrichplatz. Museum’s current name was given in the year 1933.
Bruckner was the museum director from 1935 to 1946, and in the first year of his service as museum director, the department or unit named “Germanenschau” in the museum was established. The Germanenschau unit consists of traveling exhibits.
With the aid of Heinrich Etterich in the same year, Bruckner also established the exhibition of history’s oldest navigation collections on the Rhine.
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Goethe-Museum Düsseldorf
Address: Jacobistraße 2, 40211 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Goethe-Museum Düsseldorf is a museum in Jacobistraße 2, 40211 Düsseldorf, Germany. The museum was founded in the year 1956. It is one of German’s three representative Goethe museums, the other two being the Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main and the Goethe National Museum in Weimar.
The museum gains support from the state capital of Düsseldorf and the Anton and Katharina Kippenberg Foundation. Düsseldorf’s commitment to support, equip, maintain, and develop the museum was signed in the foundation contract dated 13th of February, 1953.
The current director of the museum is Christof Wingertszahn (since 2013). Other individuals who served as directors in the museum include Hellmuth von Maltzahn (1955–1965), Jörn Göres (1966–1992), and Volkmar Hansen (1993–2012).
The museum has such units as the manuscript archive, the research library, an event center where a series of programs may be hosted, and the art collection unit. About fifty thousand testimonies from Goethe’s time are on display in the museum.
The museum used to occupy the Hofgärtnerhaus, a baroque-style structure owned up as an official residence for the incumbent court gardener.
Many outstanding temporary exhibitions that have earned the museum a certain kind of grace have been held and hopefully will continually hold.
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Hetjens-Museum
Address: Schulstraße 4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Hetjens Museum is a historic ceramic museum that is home to many international exhibits from many parts of the world, lasting over eight thousand years.
For this characterization, the museum has been called the most universal. The museum is named after Laurenz Heinrich Hetjens (1830-1906), on whose estate the exhibition center was found aground.
Hetjens was a journeyman upholsterer and saddler, known to be successful in his post as technical director of a glass factory in Aachen. Hetjens devoted himself to collecting artworks and furthering deeper research of the history, origin, and formation of arts after his marriage to Maria Catharina Regnier.
He focused on collecting Rhenish stoneware of the Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. He participated in excavations that proclaimed him to the world and invested money in buying other excavations.
Upon his death, his will contained his writing, ordering that up to one hundred and fifty thousand of his gold marks be made available for a possible museum construction so that the public could view the collections that would come with his name.
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Museum Kunstpalast
Address: Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Museum Kunstpalast is a contemporary art museum and one of the best attractions in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was established in the year 1916, first as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. The museum is dedicated to displaying typical communal art collections of various origins.
The museum’s very first exhibit was a donation from Jan Wellem and his wife, Anna Maria Luisa de Medici, and a contribution from other rich Düsseldorf citizens.
In the nineteenth century, collections of Lambert Krahe (previously stored in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for academic purposes) were incorporated into the museum, creating a noticeable expansion. The abode of the museum, the Ehrenhof, was constructed in the 1920s based on an architectural design by Wilhelm Kreis.
Collections in the museum consist of fine arts items originating from the Classical era up until the present. Such collections include drawings, a collection of over seventy thousand graphic exhibits and photographs, sculptures, applied arts, and some glass collections.
Of the graphic collections, a total number of fourteen thousand Italian baroque graphics are represented. Works from Europe, Persia/Iran, and Japan are displayed in the museum.
Art collections in the museum also include artworks from the Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance, the time of Goethe, and the nineteenth and twentieth-century collections.
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Kunstsammlung
Address: Ständehausstraße 1, 40217 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in general, is the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia’s art collection situated in Ständehausstraße 1, 40217 Düsseldorf, Germany. Three venues were mapped in different geographical positions—the K20 at Grabbeplatz, the K21 at Standehaus, and the Schmela Haus.
The K21 in Ständehaus, popularly known as merely Kunstsammlung situated in Ständehausstraße 1, 40217 Düsseldorf, Germany, or the Ständehaus am Kaiserteich. It was inaugurated in 2002 by the then-German president, President Johannes Rau.
This particular arm of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen has become the second major pillar of the modern and contemporary art collection. The structure which houses the Ständehaus in Düsseldorf was raised in the years between 1876 to 1800.
It came in the Renaissance style, designed by Julius Raschdorff. The Provincial Diet of the Prussian province of the Rhineland was the occupier of the building for so many years after its erection. From 1949 and 1988, the Parliament of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia took over the residence.
Fourteen years after the Parliament relocated from the building, the structure was reconstructed for three years based on a design by the architects Kiessler+Partner of Munich. After the reconstruction to resemble a contemporary museum, the K21 museum took over the residence.
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Classic Remise Dusseldorf
Address: Harffstraße 110A, 40591 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Classic Remise Dusseldorf is an automobile museum located in Harffstraße 110A, 40591 Düsseldorf, Germany. It is right in a historic locomotive roundhouse. The center was opened in 2006 and has since improved its services, beauty, and grace.
The Classic Remise Dusseldorf has several garages where classic cars and other land vehicles are parked for dealers. There are shops, too, where spare parts are sampled.
Other sections for clothing, models of cars, accessories, and restaurants and eateries are inside the center. The Classic Remise Dusseldorf is actually one of the most attractive places in the whole of the city.
The center’s previous name was acquired in 2010 by Meilenwerk AG. Thus, the need to change the center’s current name now bears Classic Remise Dusseldorf.
The center is usually open from Monday to Saturday from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm. On Sundays, it opens from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm. The Classic Remise Dusseldorf is a lovely place to be in.
Aquazoo Löbbecke Museum Dusseldorf
Address: Kaiserswerther Str. 380, 40474 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Aquazoo Löbbecke Museum Dusseldorf is a zoo and museum that occupies roughly a landscape of six thousand eight hundred square meters.
As of September 2018, the museum had recorded five hundred and twenty thousand visitors. The museum went through a series of lockdown years and reopening years.
The museum was opened in 1987, then known as Löbbecke-Museum + Aquazoo. As of the year 2018, there were around five hundred and sixty species of animals exhibited in the aquarium, terrarium, and tropical hall.
These can be found in the twenty-five themed rooms of the museum. Other exhibits include a collection of one thousand five hundred history exhibits, interactive stations, and models. The origin of the museum could be traced back to two sources.
The first is to Theodor Lobbecke, a pharmacist who, after his death, had his collections as a property of Dusseldorf city, which was then put on to become some of the exhibits that would form the museum.
The museum came up three years after Theodor’s death in 1904, completely named after him. The second source speaks of the integration that occurred between the museum and the Dusseldorf Zoo, which occurred in the year 1930. The Dusseldorf Zoo had long been in existence, even before the creation of the museum.
Museum for European Garden Art
Address: Benrather Schloßallee 100, 40597 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Museum for European Garden Art is an art museum spread over two thousand square meters. The museum’s focus is on displaying a collection of exhibits that portray the arts of medieval Europe. These arts are coupled with natural beauty in neatly trimmed and delicately carved natural life forms like plants, flowers, etc.
Exhibits in the museum comprise beautiful paintings, stunning graphics, and sculptures of varying sizes and forms. Also displayed as exhibits are literature, including interesting books, poetry, and models that detail the history and profile of the garden art.
Special lecturers are equally conducted in the Schloss Benrath section of the museum. Guided tours also are possible in the museum, and they come at regular intervals.
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Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Address: Grabbepl. 4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf is an exhibition hall or museum displaying contemporary art open to the public. The building occupied by the art center was erected in the year 1967 according to the architectural design of Konrad Beckmann and Brockes.
The building is in the Brutalist style. Two institutions have used the building since its erection: the Kunsthalle and the Kunstverein fur de Rhheinlande und Westfalen.
The conceptual direction of the museum is quite the kind that has never been seen before—it stands out very distinctly. The museum focuses on these contemporary arts’ historical and local points of reference.
The Kunsthalle Museum usually holds discussions that deeply explore the arts of today and their immediacy. It is the museum’s duty to reveal the roots of these art forms and to ensure continuity within the artistic discourse. For renovation purposes, the museum was temporarily on lockdown.
The architectural team from rheinflügel took charge of the renovation assignments. The renovation succeeded in enhancing the outlook of the museum. The interior beauty and simplicity first enchant visitors.
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THE CALI DREAMS MUSEUM
Address: Erkrather Str. 343, 40231 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Cali Dreams Museum is a large museum beautified with many colors. It is located in Erkrather Str. 343, 40231 Düsseldorf, Germany, and its landscape extends more than one thousand five hundred square meters. The museum has over twenty-five different rooms. The museum sends one into a dreamland, one full of fantasy.
A stroll could be taken in the gigantic Cadillac of the US, walking through the beautiful Chinatown delicately beautified with colorful ornaments.
The Cali Dreams Museum is a product of artistic contributions from different international artists. Though research may be conducted with the exhibits the museum offers, its major concern is filling people with as much maximum fun as they require.
Music plays on in the museum coupled with perfect lighting. There are lots of perfect spots to take colorful, amazing pictures. The museum fills its visitors with memories and experiences they will never forget, at least not in a hurry.
Admission into the museum comes in various ranges. For kids up to three years, no admission fee to the museum is required. Children from four to thirteen get discounted admission. The Cali Dreams Museum isn’t so far from Düsseldorf Main Station (Hauptbahnhof). Among many other exhibits, exhibits include a pink Cadillac and a train in the world-famous golden gym.
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NRW-Forum Düsseldorf
Address: Ehrenhof 2, 40479 Düsseldorf, Germany
The NRW Forum Wirtschaft und Kultur, known as Forum NRW, is a museum that seeks to deal with the North Rhine-Westphalia’s development and economic standards.
The museum is housed in the Ehrenhof complex, built between 1925 and 1926 by Wilhelm Kreis. The same complex houses the Kunstpalast Museum.
The initial name of the museum when it was newly opened in the 1970s was the Museum für Industrie und Wirtschaft (English: Museum for Industry and Economy). The current name was acquired in the 1990s alongside the concept behind the earlier forms of display in the museum.
Initially, the exhibitions displayed were permanent, but of late, they began to vary depending on different themes. The NRW-Forum Dusseldorf’s museum bases its exhibitions on historical, political, social, or themes relating to economic conditions, all viewed from different angles.
Photography and new media collections are the specialties of the museum. Exhibits include Anton Corbijn, Media Lounge/The Hire, Mutanten, Alexander McQueen – Catwalk Videos, Der Traum vom Turm, Martin Kippenberger – Bodencollage, Andy Warhol – Myths, etc.
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Neanderthal Museum
Address: Talstraße 300, 40822 Mettmann, Germany
The Neanderthal Museum is a museum located in Talstraße 300, 40822 Mettmann, Germany. It is located on the site first discovered by a man the Neanderthal in Neandertal. The museum displays collections that center around the evolution of man.
The Neanderthal Museum was built based on a design by Zamp Kelp, Julius Krauss, and Arno Brandlhuber in 1996. This resultant design resulted from a completion held in 1993, where very skilled architects participated (130) in rendering their proposed designs in the competition.
The museum records a total of one hundred and seventy visitors per annum. In the museum, one can find an archaeological park at the original discovery site. One can equally find a Stone Age workshop and a trail of art named “human traces”. Signs in the museum come in English as well as in German.
In 2006, the museum’s multimedia exhibition was upgraded. Typically, the museum aims to portray the background of people who immigrated from the savannas to contemporary cities, emphasizing Neanderthals. There is a collection of casts of the main human fossils. This collection represents the evolution of the hominids.
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Sammlung Philara
Address: Birkenstraße 47a, 40233 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Sammlung Philara is a privately owned museum that stands is a one thousand seven hundred square meter space with an impressive, stunning architectural construction.
Gil Bronner’s collections are very well projected in the museum. One could view his art collections with ceilings nine meters above the floor. Over twenty years, Gil Bronner has been able to purchase about one thousand three hundred artworks that make up his collection.
Different internationally established artists have designed or put up these artworks. On the roof of the museum building is a terraced sculpture. There’s a temporary exhibition in the museum, where items are rotationally being changed over time.
Events such as concerts are held in the museum from time to time. In addition, the museum gives room for lectures, where people get to be educated on the courses of the form of art they seek to know. Readings as well take place in the museum.
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K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
Address: Grabbepl. 5, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, was founded in 1961 by the North Rhine-Westphalia state government. The K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Museum was established in the year 1986.
One enters the museum building, and one first enters the Grabbe Halle section on the same level, which happens to be the largest gallery space with about fourteen meters high ceilings. The hall alone measures about six hundred square meters and has no visible support pillars.
The first upper story’s large hall is made to reflect beautiful natural light. A measure extension program commenced in 2008 for the museum, and by 2010, the new construction was done and the building inaugurated.
During these two years of expansion/renovation, the museum was temporarily closed. In the entire museum are two exhibition halls. Both exhibition halls lack pillar supports and, if joined together, will measure about two hundred square meters. In the Klee Halle exhibition hall, temporary exhibitions are displayed.
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Memorial Dusseldorf
Address: Mühlenstraße 29, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
Memorial Dusseldorf, also known as Places of Remembrance and Memorial Dusseldorf, is an exhibition center on the western side of the Standthaus in the Old Town Alstadt.
The Memorial Museum seeks to commemorate or honor those who’d been victims of the violence of National Socialism. The museum includes a research center, which provides resources required for research programs on its covers, and the archive center.
The museum has since 1987 been in existence. In 2015, there was an expansion in the museum to triple its former size. This expansion particularly included the permanent exhibition complemented by the “Dusseldorf children and young people under National Socialism.”
The museum’s current location appears to be the perfect location for it, considering that the same location had borne rooms that served as interrogation rooms, detention cells for the Gestapo and SS police during the National Socialism era, and served as offices for the perpetrators of National Socialism.
The police headquarters was in this location from 1926 to 1934, which the Gestapo fully controlled. Later, the SS and the District military command parked in the house for years. Admission to the museum is completely free.
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Julia Stoschek Collection / Foundation e.V.
Address: Schanzenstraße 54, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany
Julia Stoschek Collection / Foundation e.V. is an arts center in Schanzenstraße 54, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany. The center is named after Julia Stoschek (born 1975), a German collector of media arts and a billionaire.
Julia Stoschek partners with the Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH & CO. KG., a very big automotive supplier with around twenty-four thousand employees and sales of about six billion euros per annum.
Upon Julia’s graduation from college, she took an interest in cultural management, which had in some way inspired the collection center named after her today. The Julia Stoschek Collection is a completely private collection of contemporary international arts focusing on time-based media.
The collection was established in 2007 when Julia was thirty-two years old. The collection consists of more than seven hundred works crafted by about two hundred different artists, a majority of whom are European and American.
When Love is not Enough Wall was developed on the second exhibition floor as a permanent exhibition by Olafur Eliasson when the museum was opening. The museum’s focus is on the moving images arising from the 1960s up until the present age.
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Museum für Naturkunde Stiftung Schloß und Park Benrath
Address: Benrather Schloßallee 102, 40597 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Museum für Naturkunde Stiftung Schloß und Park Benrath is a museum located in Benrather Schloßallee 102, 40597 Düsseldorf, Germany. The museum is committed to showcasing the Lower Rhine Bay and the Niederbergisches Land’s natural history.
Such natural history includes the history of fishing in the Rhine, centurial changes in the Rhine, moor and health, the region’s fauna and flora, trees in the castle park, etc. It does make sense to say that exhibition in this center tries to imitate the earth and life’s natural history.
Native birds cluster around the environment, singing in the castle park at electronically simulated dawn, especially the Benrath bird clock species. A special room in the center named “Blueprint of Life” is dedicated to the science and technology of DNA (which, in itself, is defined as the blueprint of life).
Here, visitors learn about DNA and how codons (three sets of amino acids) combine to form chains of themselves that make up the constituent of the DNA.
Further details are provided for the replication of the DNA. The study exhibition includes collections of thousand and seventy-four prepared birds and seventeen mammals.
Dr. P. Frey intended to gather as many species as possible, and the center’s environment had helped greatly in actualizing this. Josef Pallenberg’s animal sculptures can equally be found in the museum.
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