German orchestra L'Arte del Mondo has primarily devoted itself to historically oriented performances, and specifically to revivals of little-known works and to innovative performances that put familiar works in a new perspective. In the latter vein it has performed music from times as recent as the Romantic era.

L'Arte del Mondo was formed in 2004 by freelance German conductor Werner Ehrhardt. The group quickly garnered invitations to perform at major German festivals, including the Beethoven Festival in Bonn. In 2006 its recording of Etienne Méhul's L'Irato ou L'Emporté won a French Diapason d'Or award. It signed with the Capriccio label and released its first recording there, of Giovanni Paisiello's little-known Passio di San Giovanni, in 2007. The orchestra has continued to record for Capriccio, Onyx, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, releasing a performance of Antonio Salieri's La Scuola de' Gelosi on the latter label in 2016. That year the group made its inaugural tours of both North and South America. It has also recorded a group of symphonies of Carl Stamitz for CPO.

L'Arte del Mondo is perhaps best known for performances and recordings of an experimental nature. It participated in the Vivaldi Recomposed version of the Four Seasons violin concertos devised by composer Max Richter, and it collaborated with Turkey's Pera Ensemble in a reconceptualization of Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio from the Turkish point of view. It has also collaborated with Israeli and Palestinian musicians, and with those from the Beijing Opera. It earned a second Diapason d'Or award in 2011 accompanying Israeli soprano Chen Reiss in a program of works by Mozart, Haydn, and Salieri.

L'Arte del Mondo has been in permanent residence at the Bayer Kulturhause in Leverkusen, Germany, since the 2010-2011 season. In addition to Reiss, it has featured as soloists sopranos Simone Kermes, Edita Gruberová, Laura Aikind, and Raffaella Milanesi; tenors Christoph Prégardien, Rainer Trost, and Thomas Michael Allen; violinists Daniel Hope, Viktoria Mullova, and Baiba Skride; trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich; harpist Xavier de Maistre; and jazz pianist Uri Caine. ~ James Manheim, Rovi