Dresden Military History Museum - in pictures

Dresden’s Military History Museum bisected by Daniel Libeskind’s new steel structure: ‘It’s about catastrophe,’ he says Photograph: Matthias Rietschel/AP

An interior shot of the Museum of Military History. 'This viewing platform is within Libeskind's meteorite and the view of Dresden, the fantastical city of rococo and gothic that was splintered like porcelain in two nights of bombing in 1945, can only be seen through its mesh' Photograph: Bitter Bredt /Courtesy of Holzer Kobler Architekturen

A newly compressed staircase inside the museum: ‘Libeskind has always shown faith in the power of acute angles to convey pain’ Photograph: Bitter Bredt /Courtesy of Holzer Kobler Architekturen

A gas mask of the German Bundeswehr and other protective wear on display: 'The museum's varied exhibits are part of an intensely and minutely considered representation of modern Germany’s complicated feelings about war' Photograph: Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images

Military uniforms of various NATO-member countries Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Various bombs and rockets: 'every effort has been made to avoid fetishising equipment' Photograph: Bitter Bredt /Courtesy of Holzer Kobler Architekturen

Military-inspired amusement park vehicles Photograph: Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images

A model of a clown on an 'Atom Rocket' on display Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A military-inspired outfit designed by Vivienne Westwood Photograph: Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images

'The building's energy dissipates rather too rapidly when you are returned to the world of the right angle, in flanking galleries dedicated to more conventional chronological displays'
Photograph: Bitter Bredt/Courtesy of Holzer Kobler Architekturen

A stuffed mule in an exhibit showing the roles of animals in war Photograph: Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images

Night time view of the exterior. 'The Dresden museum offers a particularly pure form of the anguished angle and tests its effectiveness to destruction' Photograph: Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images