Bavarian National Museum

This guide to the Bavarian National Museum in Munich follows a Munich banker, Max Schmederer, who spent decades chasing carved nativity figures through markets in Bavaria, the Alps and Naples until his own home filled with them, and who opened his doors to strangers every Christmas. It traces how his collection ended up here, alongside the story of the museum itself, founded by a king inspired by London's world fair and built out by architect Gabriel von Seidl on Prinzregentenstrasse. The building took shape across two earlier homes before it found its current form in nineteen hundred.