Glaspalast

The Glaspalast (Glass Palace) in Munich was a historic exhibition building erected in 1854 on the grounds of the Old Botanical Garden. King Maximilian II of Bavaria commissioned the complex for the First General German Industrial Exhibition, which took place just three years after the completion of London's famous Crystal Palace. The architect August von Voit designed the building as an elongated five-aisle hall with a transept and rectangular annexes. At 234 meters long, 67 meters wide, and 25 meters high, it was an imposing structure of glass and cast iron. Remarkably, it used no load-bearing masonry at all. The prefabricated iron components came from the Cramer-Klett company in Nuremberg, while the glass was sourced from the Schmidsfelden glassworks, among others. Construction took only six months, made possible by the use of standardized building elements.

After the industrial exhibition opened in 1854, overshadowed by cases of cholera, the Glaspalast became a central venue for cultural and technological events. In 1882 it hosted the first electrically lit International Electricity Exhibition, where Oskar von Miller demonstrated the transmission of electrical power over long distances. In the following decades, the building served almost exclusively as a venue for international art exhibitions. These events cemented Munich's reputation as a city of art and culture as well as an important trade fair and congress location. The Glaspalast was not only a place for presentation but also a forum for the international art trade and social gatherings.

On June 6, 1931, the building was completely destroyed in a major fire. The cause was later determined to be arson. The fire destroyed more than 3,000 works of art, including an entire special exhibition of German Romantic painters, and damaged numerous other works by contemporary artists. Plans to rebuild the Glaspalast on the same site were abandoned after the Nazis seized power in 1933. Instead, the Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) was built there in 1937. Today, the only reminder of the original building is the Glaspalast Fountain, which survived unscathed and now stands on Weißenburger Platz. On the site of the former Glaspalast, you'll now find a park café with a beer garden.