Designed by German architect Stephan Braunfels, the Pinakothek der Moderne was inaugurated in September 2002 after seven years of construction.

The $120 million, 22,000-square-meter[1] building took a decade to finish because of bureaucratic objections to design and cost, which were ultimately bridged by private initiative and financing.

[2] The rectilinear facade, dominated by white and grey concrete, is interrupted by large windows and high rise columns, the latter supporting the extensive canopied roof.

The ground floor shows alternating exhibitions of one of the most important collection of works on paper in Germany, with old German, Dutch and Italian drawings (including masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci) and German and international drawings of the 19th–21st centuries, e.g. by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee and David Hockney.

The collection shows especially drawings, blueprints, photographs, models and computer animations about the work of notable architects like François de Cuvilliés, Balthasar Neumann, Gottfried Semper, Le Corbusier, and Günther Behnisch.