Museum Island Berlin

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Janet Schayan
It's a place that seduces and enchants. And sometimes it even takes our breath away, for example, after climbing the steps to the entrance of the Altes Museum and then suddenly standing in the colossal two-storey rotunda designed by the renowned architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. A pantheon, in the heart of Berlin. O just around the corner, in the Pergamon Museum, when we sit for a while on the reconstructed steps of the Pergamon altar to contemplate the Greek gods battling against the giants on the ancient altar frieze. Just a few metres away we can walk through the amazing, glistening blue Gate of Ishtar that once led into Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. And then there are the encounters that we seek time and again when in Berlin: the late Gothic carvings of the evangelists by Tilman Riemenschneider in the Bode Museum, which was reopened just a few months ago; the marble sculpture of the Prussian princesses by Schadow in the Alte Nationalgalerie, which was renovated in 2001; and of course, "Berlin's most beautiful lady" - nothing but limestone and plaster, yet her gaze from the one remaining eye draws us inescapably back through the centuries: Nefertiti.
After 50 years of temporary residence in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the world-fainous bust of the Egyptian queen moved back to Berlin-Mitte in 2005, to the Altes Museum. In 2009 her majesty will make the final journey to her original Berlin home at the beautifully restored Neues Museum. Are all these different museums confusing you? They are all located on about one square kilometre of land. On an island in the middle of the River Spree in the heart of Germany's capital city, an island dedicated to the arts and the history of humankind.
The collections of the five great institutions on Museum Island lead us through 6,000 years of civilisation, and each is a precious gem in its own right. Taken together, they are probably the "most important museum complex in the world," enthuses Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum. They include the Altes Museum with the Antiquity Collection and temporarily the Egyptian Museum; the Alte Nationalgalerie with the paintings and sculptures of the 19th century; the Pergamon Museum with the Antiquity Collection, the Museum of the Near East and the Museum of Islamic Art; and the Bode Museum, which juts into the Spree like a giant steamer with a rounded bow and mighty dome at the northern tip of the island. It contains the most important collection on the development of European sculpture. And finally there is the Neues Museum, a painful war ruin for decades, which was originally the most innovative museum building when it opened in 1859. Restoration is now in full swing. The museum, which includes the legendary crimson-walled "Niobean Hall" with its ceiling supported by gilded cast iron arches, will be reopening to the public in 2009.
Museum Island, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, is an almost inexhaustible treasure house. At the same time it is currently Europe's biggest cultural construction site. It will take until at least 2015 to complete the ambitious master plan and the renovation of all five museums. German reunification in 1990 created the possibility of again combining the collections in their original location following their long division between west and east after World War II. As a result, the historical museum district commissioned by the Prussian kings in the early 19th century is now being transformed into a fully modernised, state-of-the-art museum landscape. The first plans of 1822 were created by the famous architect of classicism Karl Friedrich Schinkel and focused on the northern part of the island in the Spree. Today, British star architect David Chipperfield is piloting the master plan. He will be linking tour of the museums for visitors via an "archaeological promenade" of interconnecting underground passageways. On the topic of visitors: when the complex has been completed and all of the museums have been opened the island will have to cater for four million visitors a year. For this reason Chipperfield is planning a separate entrance building: the James Simon Gallery, named after one of the great patrons, will form the main entrance to Museum Island. From here the streams of visitors can embark on their discoveries, relax in cafe's, browse around shops and find everything that modern museum architecture has to offer.
It was already clear when the long-awaited reopening of the Bode Museum took place in October 2006 that the interest of Berliners and city visitors was simply enormous. They queued patiently to marvel at the splendidly renovated, gleaming showcase with its collection of sculptures ranging from antiquity to around 1800. "The most fastidious cultural critics had tears in their eyes, and some of them even had tears in their pens afterwards," commented writer Peter Richter on the opening. But let's be honest, it's understandable that enthusiasts can be so openly moved by such a wealth of museum splendour.

— Deutscland