Berlin's Museum Island

Between the Pleasure Garden to the south and the Monbijou Bridge in the north, between the Kupfergraben in the west and the River Spree in the east lies the area of Berlin’s Museum Island.

With five great buildings housing its collections, it forms a unique architectural ensemble right in the middle of Berlin. The complex, which was severely damaged in the Second World War and only partly rebuilt, has been since 1999 the subject of a renovation plan, Masterplan 2012, which provides for historically sensitive reconstruction and modernisation, a new entrance building and a subterranean archaeological passage. The Museum Island has been on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List since 1999.

The history of the construction of the Museum Island extends over more than 100 years and begins in 1830 with the opening of the “Old Museum”, commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm III and designed by Friedrich Karl Schinkel. This neo-Classical building with its rotunda modelled on the Roman Pantheon is regarded as one of the world’s earliest buildings to be designed as a museum. Prominently positioned opposite the old Berlin City Palace and next to the Humboldt University, the museum building demonstrates both the king’s pride as a collector and the demand of the newly powerful bourgeoisie for public participation.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV also had a “sanctuary for the arts and sciences” in mind when he commissioned Schinkel’s pupil August Stühler to build the New Museum and the Old National Gallery. The magnificent buildings, connected by colonnades, are based on the Prussian king’s own sketches.

With a totally novel combination of ancient construction techniques and iron-framed construction, Stühler was able to make architectural history with the New Museum, which opened in 1855. The Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, renamed the Bode Museum in 1960 after its first curator, only took its place at the northern corner of the island at the beginning of the 20th Century. With its neo-Baroque façade and the cupola of the Hall of Heroes, it creates a splendid impression at the confluence of the two arms of the River Spree.

The Pergamon Museum, built between 1912 and 1930, at building on the Museum Island. With its architecture reminiscent of a temple complex from Antiquity, it fills the gap between the New Museum and the Bode Museum. The first phase of the Masterplan 2012 was completed in 2001 when the works on the Old National Gallery were finished. This has allowed the magnificent temple-like construction to once again fulfil its function as a venue for the presentation of 19th-Century art. The Bode Museum, too, has again been accessible to the public since 2005, and in the long term is to house the painting gallery which has been moved out to Dahlem.

Under the direction of David Chipperfield, who is also responsible for the visitor centre currently under construction, the New Museum should be shining with new splendour by 2009. The Egyptian collection with the bust of Nefertiti, currently still temporarily housed in the Old Museum, will then be able to move back into its old home. Only after that is it planned to renovate the Old Museum in sections. Because of its size, the renovation and extension of the Pergamon Museum probably represents the greatest challenge.

With around a million visitors annually, the Pergamon Museum is doubtless the most popular attraction on the Museum Island. It houses world-famous examples of ancient monumental architecture such as the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus and the Ishtar Gate, as well as the Museums for Islamic and for Near Eastern Art. The never finished fourth wing of the still horseshoe-shaped complex is to be completed, starting in 2008, with a glass “bolt”, to make room for further large ancient monuments. The planned archaeological passage takes up the original overall art-historical concept of the Museum Island. With the newly created underground exhibition space, this will allow the journey from the early advanced civilisations to the late 19th Century, represented by the collections in the individual buildings, to be made even more explicit.

Alun Hill MCIJ