Photo: Sir James · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Rheinisches Malermuseum

Association-run museum of the painting and decorating trade with a painter's workshop from around 1900 in Bonn – currently not open regularly due to building renovation.

Temporarily closed

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Temporarily closed. Currently not open regularly due to the conversion of the former Pestalozzischule into the municipal archive; no reopening has been announced. According to the City of Bonn (2025), the museum will remain on the upper floor of the gymnasium.

About the museum

The idea for a museum of the painting trade in the Rhineland arose in the late 1970s; in 1985 the Förderverein Rheinisches Malermuseum Bonn (friends' association) was founded to advance the concept and financing. On November 10, 1989, the museum opened in the former painters' hall on the upper floor of the former vocational school, the gymnasium of the Pestalozzischule on Budapester Straße in Bonn's Nordstadt district.

At the heart of the exhibition is a faithfully furnished painter's workshop from around 1900, with brushes, dry pigments, paint mills, gilding tools and stencils. Designs for façades, ceiling and wall paintings, as well as examples of marbling and decorative painting, show how varied the trade's techniques were. A particular eye-catcher is a painted exterior façade from the Gründerzeit era (the late-19th-century boom years). Flags, certificates and a silver cup from 1896 tell the story of the former guilds of Bonn, Bad Godesberg and the Rhein-Sieg district.

The museum is run by the friends' association and was most recently open only a few hours a week. With the conversion of the former Pestalozzischule into the new municipal archive, it is currently not regularly accessible. According to the City of Bonn's 2025 plans, the painters' museum is to remain on the upper floor of the gymnasium, which is also to house an interim branch of the Stadtmuseum (city museum); joint exhibitions are being considered.