The State Museum houses one of the largest and finest collections of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish masters in northern Germany — Rubens, Rembrandt, Brueghel, Snyders. The building is a handsome classicist structure right on the Alter Garten square, directly opposite the State Theatre. Beyond the old masters, the collection runs to medieval art, nineteenth-century German painting, and a good contemporary section. Closed Mondays; plan for two hours minimum.
Staatliches Museum Schwerin
Northern Germany's finest collection of Dutch and Flemish old masters
A story
The collection began as the personal picture gallery of the Mecklenburg dukes, assembled through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unlike many German princely collections that were dispersed or lost in the twentieth century, Schwerin's survived largely intact — 3,000 paintings in total, including exceptional works by Rubens, Rembrandt, and Brueghel. It is routinely overlooked by international visitors who don't know it exists.