Musee Unterlinden (Unterlinden Museum), Colmar (must see)

Matthias Grunewald was a painter of the German Renaissance. Only ten of his paintings and thirty-five drawings survived. The rest of his work was lost at sea while carried off by the Swedish army as booty. His masterpiece, the Isenheim Altarpiece of 1516, was spared. It has found a forever home in the Unterlinden Museum of Colmar (Musee Unterlinden), Alsace.

The museum, established in 1849, is housed in a 13th-century Dominican convent and a former public bath built in 1906. The convent, abandoned after the French Revolution, was saved by the Schongauer Society in 1847. Today, it is a French Museum visited by 200,000 visitors a year. It is one of the most well-known museums in Alsace.

In the beginning, the Unterlinden Museum's collection featured Roman mosaics discovered in Bergheim and sculptures loaned by the Louvre. In 1852 Grunewald's Altarpiece arrived. The altarpiece, along with other painted and sculpted altarpieces from Rhenish churches, abbeys, and monasteries, was installed in the old convent. The museum opened in 1853.

The need for more space appeared as the museum collections expanded significantly in the 1950s and 1980s. The city of Colmar added the nearby Neo-Baroque public bath building as a museum annex in 2015. The total area open to the public is 86,000 square feet.

The museum houses a considerable collection of Rhenish medieval and Renaissance art, including its crown jewel, Grunewald's Altarpiece. Martin Schongauer, a notable engraver and painter, is represented by altarpieces, drawings, engravings, and woodcuts. Other names are Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein, Caspar Isenmann, Jost Haller and Wilhelm Stetter.

Anonymous early German, Alsation, and Swiss masters, especially the Master of the Stauffenberg Altarpiece, are represented. Some sections of the museum are dedicated to archeology, Medieval, Baroque, and Renaissance sculpture, stained glass, weapons, music, and toys. Further expansion is contemplated.