Today we left the University of Twente to spend the day in Münster, Germany. Enno, our Netherlands tour guide, gave us a walking tour of the city. Since it was a Sunday, the city was pretty bare and many of the shops were closed. In Germany, Sundays are peoples quiet and off days. Most shops are closed and many people use the day to rest and prepare for the upcoming week.

Münster is a historic city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, known for its architecture, university culture, and role in the Peach of Westphalia. Münster traces its origins back to 793 A.D., when Charlemagne sent Ludger as a missionary to the Münsterland, founding a school that later became the Cathedral School, and he became the first bishop of Münster. The city was chartered in 1137 and became a member of the Hanseatic Legue by 1494. Münster was the site of the signing of the Peach of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War. Today, Münster has a population of around 300,000 people including 61,500 university students who attend the University of Münster. Münster’s historic city center contains a multitude of churches. The city is also known as the “bicycle capital of Germany,” with extensive cycling infrastructure which promotes sustainable transportation.

In the city, we visited a multitude of museums, such as their own Picasso museum, a Greek and Roman museum, and the Museum of Art and Culture. The Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History comprises over 350,000 objects and is dedicated to a total of 1,000 years of Western art and cultural history. You start the tour of the museum in the Renaissance and Baroque periods with paintings, prints, and sculptures filling the rooms. While there were many older Renaissance period paintings, there was also a large section of the museum dedicated to modern and 21st-century art. There were documentaries to watch as well as sculptures and exhibitions to look at. The museum gave a good historical and cultural context to the city of Munster.