Berlin's Museum Island celebrates 20 years of UNESCO status

The Altes Museum (Old Museum) is the founding building of the famous museum complex on the Spree Island. In 1830 it was the first public museum to be opened in Prussia. It was followed by the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode-Museum and lastly, in 1930, the Pergamon Museum. Since 1999, the entire complex has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

The Altes Museum (Old Museum) houses statues, weapons, gold and silver jewelry of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. It does not only show ancient treasures but with its columns and splendid halls, it is also reminiscent of the epoch. The heart of the building is the rotunda, which is designed according to the model of the ancient Pantheon in Rome.

The five museums were largely destroyed during the Second World War. The Neues Museum, which remained in ruins for a long time, was hit particularly hard. It remained closed to visitors until 2009. It presents exhibits from prehistory and early history as well as the Middle Ages. One exhibit is particularly famous: the bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti.

The Old National Gallery, a replica of a Greek temple, looks particularly sublime. In front is the equestrian statue of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who made the first sketches for the building's design. The museum shows paintings and sculptures from Goethe's time of Weimar Classicism to realism. The masterpieces include works by Caspar David Friedrich, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir.

The neo-baroque Bode Museum, which rises like a moated castle on the tip of the Museum Island, is frequently photographed. It houses, among other things, Byzantine art, sculptures and paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries as well as a coin collection. All the artistic styles of a given period are displayed here together. The museum thus follows the concept of its founder, Wilhelm von Bode.

Since 2014, the Pergamon Hall with its famous antique frieze has no longer been open to the public. The most famous museum on the island is being completely renovated. The construction work should be finished by 2025 at the latest.

Despite the ongoing restoration, visitors can still see the blue Ishtar Gate (above), a Processional Way from Babylon, and the famous market gate of Miletus. They are among the highlights along with the Pergamon Altar. The Pergamon Museum was the last of the five exhibition houses to be built. Its impressive exhibits make it the most visited museum in Berlin.

Nevertheless, visitors to Berlin do not have to forgo seeing the famous Pergamon Altar. Since November 2018, the artist Yadegar Asisi has been presenting a huge panorama picture in a temporary exhibition building opposite the Bode Museum that stages the city of Pergamon with its altar in Roman times around 129 AD.

The newest building on Museum Island is the James Simon Gallery by star architect David Chipperfield, which opened on July 12, 2019. It is the central reception and service building for all five exhibition halls. With around 2.5 million visitors annually, Berlin's Museum Island is one of the biggest crowd-pullers in Germany.

The James Simon Gallery was built as part of a master plan to renovate and modernize the Museum Island. With the new central visitor center and the Archaeological Promenade, the individual museums are to grow together to form a common complex.

Today the collections unite 6,000 years of human history. This earned Berlin's Museum Island the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. With 2.3 million visitors annually, the Museum Island is a tourist highlight in Berlin. A stroll across the Museum Island is definitely worthwhile — even before the reopening of the Pergamon Museum in 2025.