Unterlinden Museum — Isenheim Altarpiece

The Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Grand Est, holds what many scholars consider the greatest surviving work of German Renaissance painting: the Isenheim Altarpiece, created by Matthias Grünewald between approximately 1512 and 1516. The altarpiece — a polyptych of hinged painted panels — was commissioned for the hospital chapel of the Antonine monastery at Isenheim to comfort patients suffering from ergotism. Its outer panels show a crucifixion of unprecedented physical expressiveness, depicting Christ with the skin lesions of the very disease the patients endured. The inner panels, revealed when the wings are opened, shift to radiant nativity and resurrection scenes in vivid colour. The altarpiece is displayed in the former Gothic chapel of a Dominican convent that forms the heart of the Unterlinden complex; the 13th-century vaulted space and rose window create an exceptional setting for the work. The museum also holds a substantial collection of Upper Rhine medieval art, Flemish and German paintings from the 15th to 17th centuries, Renaissance goldsmithwork, and a modern and contemporary wing designed by Herzog and de Meuron, opened in 2016. The full circuit takes 1.5–2 hours. The altarpiece room alone warrants 20–30 minutes; the modern wing adds 30–45 minutes for visitors interested in 20th-century art. Colmar old town is 5 minutes' walk from the entrance.