The Grassi Museum is a building complex in Leipzig that houses three museums: the Ethnography Museum, the Musical Instruments Museum and the Applied Arts Museum. It is named after Franz Dominic Grassi, a Leipzig businessman of Italian descent who died in 1880 and left over two million marks to the city.
The old museum, built from 1892 to 1895, became too small, so an architecture competition produced a new building paid for with the Grassi bequest. Its design combines New Objectivity and Art Deco elements and is based around several courtyards. Construction took place from 1925 to 1929.
The museum was severely bombed in 1943, losing tens of thousands of items. The first exhibitions reopened in 1954. It was fully renovated from 2001 to 2005, and the Museum of Applied Arts reopened in 2007.
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