On a cultural trip with the German Digital Library - Famous museum buildings and their stories

Originally, the Louvre was planned and built around the year 1200 as a fortress. It was supposed to protect the right bank of the Seine. In the 14th century, the castle was converted into a permanently habitable royal residence, and from the 16th century, the palace was then the main residence of the French king. It was not until the Sun King Louis XIV that the royal seat was moved to Versailles - today also used as a museum.

Shortly after the start of the French Revolution, the fledgling French National Assembly decided in 1791 to use the increasingly decaying Louvre as a collection site for important artistic and scientific works. Two years later, the Musée du Louvre opened its doors to the public and displayed parts of various royal and aristocratic art collections that had survived the French Revolution.

n the 1980s, on the initiative of French President François Mitterrand, the area of the Musée du Louvre was enlarged, making it the largest museum in the world. In the course of this measure, called the "Grand Louvre" (French for "Great Louvre"), the glass pyramid was also built by the architect leoh Ming Pei as the entrance area to the museum, which, although still controversial today, has since become a landmark and famous photo motif of the French capital.

Where trains used to run - the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the Hamburg train station in Berlin

Diagonally opposite to the Louvre, on the other side of the Seine, there is also a world-famous museum: the Musée d'Orsay.

The current museum building was built in 1900 on the occasion of the Paris World's Fair as the "Gare d'Orsay" train station. Since 1977, the train station building has functioned as a museum and houses works of art from the years 1848 to 1914, including such important works as Édouard Manet's "Olympia", Claude Monet's "Rouen Cathedral" or a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh.

An office building full of art - the Uffizi in Florence

But not only railway stations are suitable for cultural misappropriation: When the Medici commissioned the "Uffizi" in the 16th century, they probably would never have suspected that they were creating one of the most worthwhile museum buildings in the world.

Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, realised his plan from 1560 onwards to unite his most important ministries and offices in a single building. The name of the building, which has remained until today, is also derived from this original use: translated from Italian, "Uffici" means nothing other than an office or - in more modern terms - a bureau.

As early as 1570, the Uffizi housed the art collection of Francesco de' Medici, which grew steadily through the Medici family's passion for collecting, gifts, dowries and inheritances. Since the middle of the 18th century, the collection has belonged to the city of Florence and is open to the public - an offer that is rightly accepted by up to 2.5 million visitors every year, as it contains such important works of art as Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", "Judith and Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi and Tizian's "Venus of Urbino".

A museum as a motor of urban development - the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

When the Uffizi were built, an entire city district had to make way for them: (Residential) houses were demolished or integrated into the new office complex, even a church fell victim to the Medici's building plans. But even without demolishing buildings, a museum can have a lasting effect on a city - as in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, for example.

In 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was opened after four years of planning and construction. At the time the museum was built, Bilbao was nothing more than a former industrial city with dilapidated industrial buildings and a moribund economy, notorious above all as a stronghold of the terrorist separatist organisation ETA.

Since the opening of the museum building by Frank O. Gehry, the face of the city has changed: the enormous presence of the new museum, but also its impressive collection with works by Mark Rothko, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Bourgeois or Jenny Holzer, attracts an average of 1 million visitors a year, who have brought an unexpected economic boom to the city of 300,000 inhabitants. The Gehry building was followed by further architectural upgrades of the city and an expansion of the tourist offer. This "Bilbao effect" has since been observed in other cities and countries and shows that art is not only able to change buildings, but entire cities and regions.

More museums in the German Digital Library