Alte Pinakothek

This guide to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich traces the museum's wartime destruction, from the incendiary bombs and gutted halls of 1943 to the aerial mine that tore a forty-five-meter gap through the building in December 1944. You'll hear about architect Hans Döllgast, handed the rebuilding job in 1952, and the choice he made about how to patch the walls once officials stopped arguing over whether to tear the ruin down. Look for where pale nineteenth-century stone meets the darker brick he chose not to hide.