Wallraf-Richartz Museum

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Köln is a fine art museum that opened in 1861. They have art from the medieval period through to the twentieth century. Each period had it’s own floor- Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Impressionist.

I was surprised how well the girls did here. Just last year, there would have been a lot more complaining.

Quinnie was especially into it. She would listen to the audio for almost all of the paintings and then educate anybody who would listen about them..

She took lots of photos also. When I looked at them later I noticed that almost all them were close-ups of insects or animals 🙂

(even if they were dead)

Grandma and Quinnie

I love this sculpture of Diana

and we thought it was hard to dress our  kids these days?!

Unfortunately, there were lots of paintings of women being groped that Kiera was fascinated with..

Halfway through the museum, there was a relaxation room where you could rest and take a break- just what we needed!

window view from the room

Baby Jesus with Köln in the background!

Then things took a darker turn. The girls (especially Kiera) were fascinated with these disturbing religious paintings. Many of them depicting hell and all of the horrible things that can happen to you there. I tried to rush them through, but Kiera wasn’t having it. She wanted to study every inch of every painting.  Examples below..

Why is the top of his head sliced off? I grew up going to Sunday school and don’t remember any of these gruesome stories from the bible. Did I get the sanitized version, or are these just the artists’ disturbed interpretations of the stories?

Kiera asked why that man was sticking his fingers in Jesus. I had no idea..

Who’d have thought you could traumatize your kids by going to a classical fine art museum? And yes, I later found a close-up photo of that frog on the woman’s breast on my phone (taken by one of the girls).

Before leaving we always stop by the gift shop to buy postcards of our favorite paintings from the museum (not the messed-up ones though). That’s Grandpa in the background- I think he was ready to leave hours earlier, but was a good sport.

museum gift shops always have such interesting toys and books

and sometimes cool socks too!