Bavarian National Museum

Listen for a moment. Traffic hums along a wide, straight avenue, and somewhere behind you the trees of the English Garden move in the wind. In front of you stands a long building that does not look like one building at all. Towers, gables and arched windows rise in different styles, like a small town crowded into a single facade. Welcome to the Bavarian National Museum, one of the oldest and largest museums of cultural history in Germany.

The museum began with a king. Maximilian II of Bavaria founded it in 1855. He wanted a place that would show the history of his people through the objects they made and used. That means not only paintings, but also altars, armour, furniture, clocks, glass and toys. His idea was simple. A nation could understand itself by looking at its own craftsmanship. That idea still shapes every room inside.

Here is the first surprise. This is not the museum's original home. The first building stood on Maximilianstraße, the grand boulevard that the same king laid out across the city. The collections soon outgrew it. That older building still stands today and holds a different museum, focused on cultures from around the world. So the Bavarian National Museum moved here, to Prinzregentenstraße, at the very end of the nineteenth century.

The new building was designed by the Munich architect Gabriel von Seidl and opened in 1900. Look again at that mixed facade, because it was planned that way. Von Seidl wanted the outside to match the inside. Sections of the building echo the periods displayed within them. One part recalls Romanesque churches, the heavy, round-arched style of the early Middle Ages. Other parts echo the Gothic, the Renaissance and the Baroque. You are reading the floor plan from the street.

This was an unusual approach at the time. Many museums placed treasures in neutral halls, one after another. Von Seidl built rooms that feel like their own era. Ceilings, doorways and windows change as you walk. In some galleries, real historic elements were built into the walls. The result is a building that works almost like a stage set. Each object stands in a setting that suits it.

Step inside, and the scale becomes clear. The collections cover many centuries, from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It is easy to lose track of time here. Many visitors plan a quick hour and stay for an afternoon. The ground floor is a good place to begin. It holds much of the medieval and Renaissance material, and the rooms there carry the strongest sense of age.

The medieval sculpture is a highlight. Look for the carved wooden figures by Tilman Riemenschneider, the great German sculptor of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He often left his limewood unpainted, which was rare in his time. Up close, you can see the fine lines of the faces, the folds of the robes, the small tired creases around the eyes. These are saints, but they look like people you might pass in a village street.

Now for the second surprise, and it is one many visitors miss. Somewhere in this building are wooden models of Bavarian towns, made in the sixteenth century by a craftsman named Jakob Sandtner. One of them shows Munich itself, as it looked more than four centuries ago. Churches, walls, gates and rows of houses are all carved in miniature. Stand over it and look for the twin towers of the Frauenkirche, the city's cathedral. You can find them in the old city, and you can still find them outside today.

As you move through the rooms, the mood shifts. The Baroque and Rococo galleries feel lighter and more playful. Gold leaf, curving forms and painted figures fill the spaces. Here you will find work by Ignaz Günther, a leading Bavarian sculptor of the eighteenth century. His figures seem to lean, turn and almost move. Compare them with the calm, still saints downstairs, and you can see how much taste changed across three hundred years.

The museum is also known for its smaller treasures. Look for the cases of porcelain, including pieces from the Nymphenburg manufactory, which still works in Munich today. There are ivories, clocks, scientific instruments and goldsmiths' work. Many of these objects are tiny. Take your time with them. The detail on a single porcelain figure can hold your attention longer than a large painting.

If you come in winter, one collection will draw you in more than any other. The museum holds a famous collection of Christmas nativity scenes, known in German as Krippen. Some come from the Alps, and some come from Naples and Sicily. The Neapolitan scenes are especially rich. Beyond the Holy Family, they show whole crowded streets, with market sellers, musicians, animals and travellers in bright clothes. Children and adults both press close to the glass. Each scene has hundreds of small stories inside it.

When you need a break, step back outside and look around the neighbourhood. Prinzregentenstraße was laid out as a grand route at the end of the nineteenth century. Other museums and cultural buildings stand nearby, and the English Garden, one of the largest city parks in Europe, begins just a short walk away. It is easy to combine an hour of medieval saints with a slow walk under the trees. Locals often do exactly that.

Before you leave, stand once more in front of the facade. Notice how the light falls differently on each section, on each tower and gable. Think of the plan behind it, a building that tells its own story from the outside. Inside are the tools, prayers, games and treasures of many generations. As you walk away along this broad avenue, listen to the traffic and the trees again, and remember that a king once believed ordinary objects could explain a whole people.