Ständehaus (Former Parliament of the Rhine Province)

The Ständehaus stands beside the Kaiserteich pond at Ständehausstraße 1 in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia. It was built between 1876 and 1880 to a design by the architect Julius Raschdorff as the meeting place of the provincial assembly of the Prussian Rhine Province, and its neo-Renaissance facade, with a central dome and ornate sandstone detail, was meant to show the standing of the province. After the Second World War the building served as the home of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, which met here from 1949 until it moved to a new building on the Rhine in 1988. That gives the Ständehaus a layered political history, from Prussian provincial administration to the early years of the federal state after 1945. The building was damaged in the war and was later repaired and adapted. In the early 2000s it was converted into an art museum and opened in 2002 as K21, the 21st-century branch of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. The conversion kept the historic shell and arranged galleries around a glass-covered central courtyard, where large installations are shown; Tomás Saraceno's suspended work in the dome has been among the best-known pieces. Visitors therefore enter an authentic political building and a contemporary art museum at once. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday and the admission fee should be checked on kunstsammlung.de. The Kaiserteich park in front of the building is free and offers a view of the facade across the water, and the Hofgarten and the Altstadt are close by. Combined with the Kunstsammlung K20 on Grabbeplatz, it forms a day of art and history.