The Diocesan Museum of Paderborn houses one of the finest collections of medieval ecclesiastical art in western Germany. The building itself — a striking modern structure clad in concrete — was specifically designed to display the cathedral treasury and the Carolingian finds discovered in the city.
The centrepiece of the collection is the Imad Madonna, an eleventh-century carved wooden figure of the Virgin commissioned by Bishop Imad, the oldest complete Madonna figure in Germany. Carolingian jewellery, reliquaries, and illuminated manuscripts from the early medieval period fill the other galleries. For anyone with an interest in the era when Paderborn was at the centre of the Frankish empire, this is an essential stop.