Museum Kunstpalast

Among its five permanent collections are the Kunstpalast’s picture gallery, featuring European paintings from the 15^th to 20^th centuries—including Peter Paul Rubens’ magnificent “Venus and Adonis”—and the modern gallery, with an impressive array of German Expressionist paintings. If you don’t think looking at glass would be all that interesting, this museum’s collection will change your mind. More than 3,000 pieces, dating from Roman times through the Middle Ages and Art Nouveau period and up to the present, is one of the most impressive in the world. If you work up an appetite, the KristallBar puts the museum in museum café: it’s dominated by a sprawling 50-foot-tall installation by the Swiss artist team Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger depicting the nervous system of a plant, with real branches and roots connected by colorful plastic tubes and wires.