The Museum der bildenden Künste (Museum of Fine Arts) is housed in a dramatic glass cube on Katharinenstraße, opened in 2004, and holds one of the most significant art collections in eastern Germany. The range is wide: Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, German Renaissance work, a strong 19th-century collection including Caspar David Friedrich, and a substantial collection of work by Max Klinger, Leipzig's own symbolist sculptor, whose polychrome marble monument to Beethoven anchors the ground floor.
The building itself is as interesting as many of the works — daylight floods through the glass walls, and the arrangement of open galleries around a central atrium creates a sense of space that works against the usual museum claustrophobia. Allow two to three hours. The café on the ground floor is decent.