The city’s honeyed art history comes alive with the Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg, revamped to the tune of a cool 10 million Euros and on loan to Berlin until further notice.

Started by Otto Gerstenberg in Berlin circa 1910, the collection, housed in the former coach house of the Charlottenburg castle (later the temporary home of the Egyptian museum), consists of over 250 works of Surrealist and fantastical art. After Gerstenberg, director of German insurance company Victoria-Versicherung and passionate art enthusiast, died in 1935, grandsons Walter and Dieter Scharf further expanded the collection.

The impressive collection includes both the obscure and the well-recognized: graphic cycles by Francisco de Goya and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and paintings by Odilon Redon and Rodolphe Bresdin are housed in the museum’s Marstal Wing; paintings and cycles by household names Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Edouard Manet are on display in another wing.