Braunschweig; Saturday, 09 September, 2023

I had a bit of a lie in as none of the museums I wanted to visit opened before 11am, so I could have a relaxed start to the day, before catching the tram over to the first stop of the day the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum.

The museum houses collections of paintings, sculptures as well as artefacts from the Ducal collections. I spent a surprising amount of time wandering around the two floors of the museum – in part because it was so quiet you didn’t feel like you were getting in anyone’s way if you stopped and looked at something for longer.

From the Ulrich-Museum I had a wander over to the Städtisches Museum to have a look around that, only to find out that due to a food festival that was taking place in all the surrounding streets that weekend the museum had decided to close – possibly to stop the temptation of bringing food in? So instead I had a wander through the festival and down to the Happy Rizzi House, an apartment block that has been heavily decorated in cartoon book style, complete with weird edges and vibrant colours.

I was also able to take in the site of the Schloß having fourth attempt at burning down – I had wondered why all the streets were so quiet – assuming it was related to the food festival – but it turned out it was because the whole of the city centre had been closed due to a fire breaking out in the shopping centre, which was no surrounded by dozens of fire engines along with assorted ambulances, police vehicles and even the press.

I headed back through the food festival, stopping for a very nice bratwurst, before making my way over to the Sankt Aegidein church. The church was decommissioned at the start of the 19th century and after various uses became the State Museum at the start of the 20th century. The main church building was returned to the Catholic community of the city as their main church and the museum retreated into the buildings of the former monastery where they are today, along with a much larger building in Burgplatz, though that was closed for renovation for several years when I visited.

The main exhibition of the museum is the former fittings and furniture from one of the city’s synagogues. As the size of the Jewish community in the city reduced in the first decades of the 20th century some of the synagogues were closed as they no longer had sufficient members to support them. The internal furniture of one such synagogue was donated to the city museum in 1924 and, miraculously – perhaps because it was seen as a museum artefact – survived the war and has now been reconstructed. The heart of a disused synagogue inside a disused church.

After visiting the museum I popped round the corner to have a quick look around the church, before catching the tram over to the north eastern side of the city centre to visit the Staatliches Naturhistorisches Museum – the state natural history museum, which knows how to draw in the crowds with a couple of dinosaurs outside the museum entrance.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the museum and they were starting to switch the lights off and usher visitors out of the galleries when I finished looking round everything.

From the museum I headed back to my hotel room to freshen up before popping out for dinner. A little later I headed out again, this time to take some photos of the city at night – and discovered that Braunschweig at night is not the nicest of places given the number of absolutely paralytically drunk people stumbling round the streets, so after taking a handful of photos I headed back to the hotel to turn in for the night.