Städel Museum

The Städel Museum wears a roof studded with one hundred and ninety-five circular glass skylights, a pattern that ripples across the garden like bubbles on a pond. Johann Friedrich Städel, a local spice merchant, died in eighteen sixteen with a singular condition for his massive estate. He demanded his collection of paintings, drawings, and engravings remain open to the public forever, managed by a foundation rather than his heirs. That collection anchors this building, protecting hundreds of years of European art from vanishing.