The Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, has been reopened to the public after an extensive redesign led by US-based architect Daniel Libeskind.

Initially founded in 1897, the attraction is now the official central museum for the country's armed forces and has more than 10,500 exhibits on display dating back to the 14th century.

The museum is one of the largest across Germany, with around 20,000sq m (215,278sq ft) of exhibition space. The redesign is thought to have cost EUR62.5m (£54.7m, US$86.4m).

At the heart of the new-look museum is a five-storey wedge of glass, concrete and steel that "slices" through the centre of the original 135-year-old building.

The wedge has a 99ft (30.2m) viewing platform overlooking Dresden, with the tip marking the location where the first bombs of an Allied air raid fell on 13 February 1945.

Reese Lubic Wöhrlin; GSE Ingenieur-Gesellschaft; Dipl.-Ing. Volker von Gagern; Ipro Dresden; and Josef Gartner worked alongside Daniel Libeskind on the project.

Other companies involved included exhibition designers Holzer Kobler Architekturen and HG Merz Architekten and Delux AG, plus Ing. Consult Cornelius-Schwarz-Zeitler.

Barbara Holzer said: "We show the contents of the exhibition as a walk-through installation in which objects become fascinating transmitters of history and grab the visitors emotionally.

"By exhibiting and combining the objects in an unconventional way we intend to irritate the viewer and thereby allow him to approach military history unprejudiced. As being part of cultural history it is also part of our life and personhood."

Image: (c) Bitter Bredt