Musée Unterlinden

Located in Colmar, France, the Musée Unterlinden showcases nearly 7,000 years of art history, including the renowned Isenheim Altarpiece.

Planning your visit

The Unterlinden exists for one work. Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, painted around 1512 for a monastery hospital that treated victims of ergotism — a horrifying disease causing gangrene, convulsions and burning pain — depicts a crucified Christ whose body is covered in the same sores the patients bore, twisted, greenish, and deliberately unbearable to look at. Patients were brought before it so they might see their suffering shared. The wings open to reveal a resurrection of extraordinary radiance. It is among the most powerful paintings in European art, and reproductions convey almost nothing of it.

The museum occupies a thirteenth-century Dominican convent in Colmar, extended in 2016 by Herzog & de Meuron with a new wing linked underground, adding modern and contemporary galleries including Picasso, Monet, Dubuffet and Soulages.

Beyond the altarpiece, the collection spans 7,000 years, from prehistoric and Gallo-Roman archaeology through Upper Rhine medieval art to the present.

Colmar's old town, with its canals and timber-framed houses, surrounds it.

Bookable options include entry tickets and formats bundling admission with a city audio guide. Current availability is listed below.