Another day in Frankfurt, meaning another day trip! This time south of town, to the city of Darmstadt, where we saw a great museum of the German state of Hesse. Definitely a very high quality and fun and fascinating, if having a very varied collection.
It contained extensive galleries on: African wildlife. Sea life. Skeletons of hominids and humans. Fossils. Ancient Greco/Roman History, Egyptian History. Medieval arms and armor. Medieval religious iconography, artwork, figures and church artifacts and decorations. There was a section on Rennaissance artwork, paintings from the 1800’s, and a section on strange modern art. Also there was a large section on earth, rocks and gemstones.
After that, we took a ride to the hilltop area known as the Mathildenhöhe. An ‘artists colony’ – a small hill with some strange artistic structures on top, including a Russian Orthodox church, and an art-nouveau style building called the Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower), which looks like it has a hand giving a giant middle finger on top of it.
This is copied from Wikipedia:
The artists’ colony was founded in 1899 by Ernest Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse.[5] His motto was: “Mein Hessenland blühe und in ihm die Kunst” (“My Hessian land shall flourish and in it, art”),[6] and he expected the combination of art and trade to provide economic impulses for his land.[7] The artists’ goal was to be the development of modern and forward-looking forms of construction and living. To this end, Ernst Ludwig brought together several artists of the Art Nouveau in Darmstadt: Peter Behrens, Paul Bürck, Rudolf Bosselt, Hans Christiansen, Ludwig Habich [de], Patriz Huber [de] and Joseph Maria Olbrich.
They built these structures, statues, garden designs and more atop this hill that we visited.
After visiting Darmstadt, we went out for another stroll through the Frankfurt Christmas Market.
As always, here are the pictures from today’s adventures:
jonsjourneythroughgermany.com 