Veste Coburg Art Collections

The Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg sit on a hill above the town of Coburg in Upper Franconia. The fortress itself began as one of the largest Staufer strongholds around 1200, then served as a Saxon electoral palace during the Reformation and as a state fortress for centuries. Martin Luther found refuge here during the 1530 Augsburg Diet while the thick walls still bear traces of the Hussite wars, the Schmalkaldic League and the Thirty Years War. The collections grew from the tastes of the Coburg dukes. Their copper-plate cabinet, glass holdings, historic armoury and German old masters—especially forty-seven works by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his circle—now fill the restored rooms. The glass collection expanded after Prince Alfred donated thousands of Venetian pieces in 1897, and the European Museum for Modern Glass in nearby Rödental opened in 2008. A Naturalienkabinett once housed minerals and curiosities before moving to the Hofgarten in 1914. Visitors walk through medieval vaults and neogothic princely apartments fitted with historic panelling and church treasures. The Cranach gallery shows fragments of the 1513 Fürstenaltar, while armoury rooms display Turkish spoils brought back by Field Marshal Prince Friedrich Josias. Modern glass installations in the Fürstenbau contrast with the 14th-century Coburg Pietà in its own chapel, and the whole hilltop site offers long views over the town and surrounding countryside.