What wasn’t complained about and criticized before, during and after the construction of the Museum of Bavarian History in Regensburg. The fact that the city on the Danube was awarded the contract at all must have made some people extremely upset, who would rather have such a prestige property in their own city. At that time, half of Bavaria applied to be the location for the museum.
Regensburg was able to boast a prime location, a piece of land directly on the Danube, with a view of the cathedral and the Stone Bridge, directly opposite the remains of the wall of the Roman legionary camp “Castra Regina”, behind which is the medieval old town with UNESCO World Heritage status.
But even in Regensburg people struggled with the museum for a long time. First there were those who preferred to continue buying radish and strawberries at the Donaumarkt and then those who came out as secret hobby architects after the exterior facade was unveiled. As a garage, ugly foreign body, piles of stones or monsters, the building was denigrated. Others thought that it blended in wonderfully with the roof landscape of the Danube bank and the jury at the time thought so too, otherwise they would probably have chosen one of the other 253 designs.
What was too modern on the outside for some was too kitschy on the inside for others. Folkish, too much Old Bavaria, FC Bayern, Ludwig and so on. There is also the Löwenbräu lion in the foyer, you can take a dialect test, and you can buy rubber ducks in lederhosen in the museum shop.
This accusation persists: that the Museum of Bavarian History comes across as too under-complex, too superficial, too simple and expected. There’s too much stuff to touch with too little content. Perhaps this refers to the densely printed text panels with which students in particular are often tormented in many museums.
Nevertheless, visitors have been coming in droves since it opened five years ago, especially the young audience. There is probably not a school class in Regensburg that hasn’t already spent their hiking day here. Probably none in all of Eastern Bavaria, if you’re honest. Culture Minister Markus Blume came to Regensburg to celebrate the one million mark that the museum cracked shortly before Christmas. One million visitors in five years is something no other museum in Regensburg can match.
A million visitors, they not only got to see lions, FC Bayern and Ludwig, but also the detailed special exhibitions – about beer, baroque or Bavaria and the Olympics. Without the museum in Regensburg they might never have learned so much about beer, but might have just had one at the Kneitinger in the old town.
And once you’re inside the house on the Danube, you can’t see the facade anyway.