These museums include the Altes Museum, the Neues Museum, the National Gallery, the Bode Museum, and the Pergamon Museum.
With so much to see we were only able to tackle three of these amazing museums.
Build between 1843 and 1855 the Neues Museum was the second museum to be built on Museum Island and was intended as an extension to house collections which could not be accommodated in the Altes Museum. Among these were collections of plaster casts, ancient Egyptian artifacts, the prehistoric and early historic collections (Museum der vaterländischen Altertümer), the ethnographic collection, and the collection of etchings and engravings (Kupferstichkabinett). It is thus the "original source" of the collections in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.
The collection contains works from Classicism and Romanticism (by artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Karl Blechen), of the Biedermeier, the French Impressionism (Édouard Manet, Claude Monet) and early modern works (Adolph von Menzel, Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth). Among the most important exhibits are Friedrich's Mönch am Meer, Menzel's Eisenwalzwerk and sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow's Prinzessinnengruppe, a double statue of princesses Louise and Friederike of Prussia. The Alte Nationalgalerie houses one of the largest collections of 19th century sculptures and paintings in Germany. [Source: Alte Nationalgalerie]
Le Moulin de la Galette by Vincent Van Gogh
Vue de Vétheuil by Claude Monet
Aside from the Smithsonian Museums and The British Museum, this has to be one of the most fascinating museums either of us has ever seen. Right after entering the museum you are confronted with the Pergamon Alter, from which the museum gets its name. Also contained in the collection are the Market Gate of Miletus and the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way. Quite the stunning display.
The Pergamon Alter
The Pergamon Altar is a monumental construction built during the reign of King Eumenes II in the first half of the second century BC on one of the terraces of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon in Asia Minor.
The entire structure is 35.64 meters wide and 33.4 meters deep; the front stairway alone is almost 20 meters wide. The base is decorated with a frieze in high relief showing the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods known as the Gigantomachy. There is a second, smaller and less well preserved high relief frieze on the inner court walls which surround the actual fire altar on the upper level of the structure at the top of the stairs. It depicts in a series of consecutive scenes events from the life of Telephos, legendary founder of the city of Pergamon and son of the hero Heracles and Auge, a daughter of the Tegean king Aleus.
Market Gate of Miletus
The Market Gate of Miletus dates from about 120 A.D. It is almost 17m high and 29m wide. The well preserved elements of the gate, which were destroyed by an earthquake around the year 1100, were dug up by Theodor Wiegand during the museum's excavations (1899 - 1913).
The Ishtar Gate
The Ishtar Gate (Arabic:بوابة عشتار) was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city.
Dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the Gate was constructed of blue glazed tiles with alternating rows of bas-relief sirrush (dragons) and aurochs.
The roof and doors of the gate were of cedar, according to the dedication plaque. Through the gate ran the Processional Way which was lined with walls covered in lions on glazed bricks (about 120 of them).
Statues of the deities were paraded through the gate and down the Processional Way each year during the New Year's celebration.
Originally the gate, being part of the Walls of Babylon, was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the world until, in the 6th century AD, it was replaced by the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way was built at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin out of material excavated by Robert Koldewey and finished in the 1930s. It includes the inscription plaque. It stands 47 feet high and 100 feet wide (14 meters by 30 meters). The excavation ran from 1902-1914 and during that time 45 feet of the foundation of the gate was uncovered.
The gate was in fact a double-gate. The part that is shown in the Pergamon Museum today is only the smaller frontal part, while the larger back part was considered too large to fit into the constraints of the structure of the museum. It is in storage. [Source: Wikipedia]
Various Exhibits
