Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

The Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung at Schaumainkai 71 is a sculpture museum in a 19th-century villa on the Museumsufer in Frankfurt's Sachsenhausen district, in the German state of Hesse. The villa was built for the industrialist Heinrich von Liebieg and now houses one of the most important collections of sculpture in Europe, spanning around five thousand years. Visitors move through galleries of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman works, then medieval and Renaissance sculpture, and on to the Baroque and later periods. The collection is known for its Gothic wooden figures, late medieval altar sculptures and works by sculptors such as Tilman Riemenschneider, as well as for classical marble copies and original Greek pieces. The museum has also researched the original colouring of antique sculpture, and its displays on polychromy show how marble statues were once painted. The villa's rooms and the surrounding garden above the Main make the setting calm and well suited to slow viewing, and sculptures in the garden can be seen when the weather is fine. A visit takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. The museum is normally closed on Mondays, and visitors should check opening hours and ticket prices on liebieghaus.de before going, because special exhibitions can change both. It lies about ten minutes on foot from Schweizer Platz, which is served by trams 15 and 16, and sits close to the Städel Museum and the Deutsches Filmmuseum. Crowds are low on weekday mornings and rise on rainy weekends. For photographs, the garden facade of the villa and the riverside promenade outside are attractive, and visitors should check inside whether photography is allowed in particular galleries.