Tour of Pergamon and New Museums

The gray classical facade of the Pergamon Museum rises on the Berlin channel Kupfergraben, like an ancient portico. The Pergamon Museum is one of the main attractions of Berlin, the unconditional center of the East Berlin Museum Island, the most visited museum in Berlin. It presents what is not in any other museum in the world: the buildings of the Ancient World in life size, not individual columns and bas-reliefs (although, of course, they too), but monumental facades throughout the hall. Through the halls of the Pergamon Museum, lifting their heads, visitors pass from ancient Greece in the Hellenistic era, through the famous Babylonian gate of Ishtar, past the walls of biblical Jericho. Behind each exhibit of the Pergamon Museum, of course, there is an important cultural and historical subtext. But no less, and often more interesting are the stories of excavations and restoration of exhibits. Unfortunately, in connection with the restoration of the building, a tour to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin now involves visiting only about a third of the museum exhibits, but even in a reduced form, the Pergamon Museum is the most visited museum in Berlin.

Side by side with the Pergamon Museum stands the New Museum. As a rule, the attention of visitors is attracted by a banner depicting a bust of Nefertiti near the entrance - not everyone knows that the original is here, on the Berlin Museum Island. Like all great women, Nefertiti is accompanied by many legends and mysteries: how could the Egyptian Museum in Cairo release this beauty outside of Egypt? Why hasn’t the bust been exhibited in public for fifteen years? And finally, the question that excites all those who admired Nefertiti in the original: why does the queen lack a second eye? We will try to solve these and many other riddles - and this is only one hypostasis of a wonderful museum! Excursion to the New Museum in Berlin also includes the fascinating history of Schliemann’s gold, the originals of which until 1945 were in Berlin, and after that were secretly transported to the Soviet Union, a visit to the statue of a boy from Xanten, exhibits from the Roman-German border and, last but not least, the history of the restoration of the museum building, restored only about ten years ago.

You can also plan to visit only one museum - Pergamsky or New.