Museums

Berlin has more museums than most people expect. The city’s history as a divided capital, the ambitions of successive governments to build cultural institutions, and the particular energy of the post-reunification years all left behind a landscape of museums that covers an extraordinary range of subjects and periods.

Museum Island is the obvious starting point. The five museums there — the Pergamon, Bode, Neues, Altes, and Alte Nationalgalerie — form one of the most significant collections of ancient and classical art anywhere in Europe. The Pergamon alone, with the reconstructed altar and the Market Gate of Miletus, justifies a half-day. The Neues Museum, rebuilt by David Chipperfield after wartime damage, is worth visiting as a building as much as for the Egyptian collection.

Beyond the island, the city offers a more varied landscape. The Deutsches Historisches Museum covers German history from the Holy Roman Empire to the present day. The Topography of Terror occupies the site of the former Gestapo headquarters and documents the Nazi security apparatus in rigorous, difficult detail. The Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is one of the most architecturally significant buildings in the city.

Contemporary and modern art is handled across several institutions: the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlinische Galerie, Martin-Gropius-Bau, and the various branches of the Staatliche Museen. Specialist museums — for film, for technology, for the history of the GDR — fill in everything else.

These guides help you decide what’s worth your time and when to go.