Museum Island

About this place

Museum Island is the northern tip of a river island in central Berlin, its entire area occupied by five major museums — an architectural and curatorial ensemble rare enough that UNESCO inscribed it as World Heritage in 1999. The idea was born in the nineteenth century when King Friedrich Wilhelm IV set the whole island aside for art and science, and the museums went up one after another across a hundred years. Each of the five has its own field: the Pergamon Museum, with temples and gateways rebuilt at original scale inside its halls; the Neues Museum, which holds the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the single most famous object in Berlin; the Altes Museum and its Greek and Roman collection; the Alte Nationalgalerie for nineteenth-century European painting; and the Bode Museum for Byzantine sculpture. One important practical point: the Pergamon Museum is entirely closed for a comprehensive restoration running many years, with parts of it not reopening before 2037 — check its status before building a visit around it. A day ticket covers all the open museums, and the island itself is a fine walk along the bank of the Spree.