Deutsches Glasmalerei-Museum Linnich, Stained glass museum in Linnich, Germany

The Deutsches Glasmalerei-Museum Linnich occupies a former water mill of the Duchy of Jülich, built in 1608, in Linnich, not near Cologne. Its 1400 m² of exhibition space on six levels includes a fully equipped stained-glass workshop on the ground floor. The collection ranges from medieval pieces to works by Georg Meistermann, Brian Clarke and Otmar Alt.

The building is a former water mill of the Duchy of Jülich, built in 1608. The Weitz family ran the mill from 1847 until it was shut down in 1966. In the 1990s the tall silo was gutted and extended with a new wing, funded by state urban-development money, and it opened as the glass-painting museum on 29 November 1997, inaugurated by NRW minister-president Johannes Rau.

The museum displays works by many artists working with glass, and their creations define the spaces you walk through. You can see how different styles and techniques stand side by side across different periods.

The museum occupies six levels, with a fully equipped glass-painting workshop on the ground floor where the making of a stained-glass panel is demonstrated. The Linnicher Mühlenteich, a branch of the Rur, still flows beneath the building. The entrance is on the side facing the mill pond.

A historic waterway still flows beneath the building, once powering the old mill operations. This hidden stream is barely visible from outside today, yet it connects the modern exhibition spaces to the site's original purpose.