Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lustgarten
he
Lustgarten
, the lively green expanse leading up to the Altes Museum on the
northern side of the Schlossplatz, is a great spot for picnics or resting your feet between
museum visits and so relaxed that it's hard to believe its history. Built as a military
parade ground (and used by Wilhelm I and Napoleon), it later saw mass protests
(a huge anti-Nazi demo here in 1933 prompted the banning of demonstrations) and
rallies (Hitler addressed up to a million people here). Bombed in the war and renamed
Marx-Engels-Platz by the GDR, its current incarnation harks back to Peter Joseph
Lenné's early nineteenth-century design with a central 13m-high fountain, as
re-envisioned by German landscape architect Hans Loidl.
At the northern end of the Lustgarten, at the foot of the steps leading up to the Altes
Museum (see p.56), is a saucer-shaped rock, carved from a huge glacier-deposited
granite boulder
found near Fürstenwalde, just outside Berlin, and brought here in
1828 to form part of the Altes Museum's rotunda. A mistake in Schinkel's plans meant
that its 7m diameter made it too large, so, for want of a better plan, it was left here to
become an unusual decorative feature.
2
Museum Island
he northern tip of the Spreeinsel, known as
Museum Island
(Museumsinsel), is the
location of Berlin's most important museums. heir origins go back to 1810, when
King Friedrich Wilhelm III decided Berlin needed a museum to house his rather scant
collection of royal treasures. He ordered the reclamation of a patch of Spree-side marsh
and commissioned Schinkel to come up with a suitable building; thus was created the
Altes Museum
, at the head of the Lustgarten. hings really took off when German
explorers and archeologists began plundering archeological sites in Egypt and Asia
Minor. he booty brought back by the Egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius in the 1840s
formed the core of what was to become a huge collection, and the
Neues Museum
was
built to house it at the behest of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Later that century the
imperial haul was augmented by treasures brought from Turkey by Heinrich
Schliemann, for which the vast
Pergamonmuseum
was constructed.
During World War II the contents of the museums were stashed away in bunkers and
mine shafts, and in the confusion of 1945 and the immediate postwar years it proved
di
cult to recover the scattered works. Some had been destroyed, others ended up in
museums in the Western sector and others disappeared to the East with the Red Army.
Gradually, though, the various surviving pieces were tracked down and returned to
Berlin - with the notable exception of the
Priam's Treasure
, Schliemann's most famous
find, which allegedly came from the ruins of the fabled city of Troy. his collection of
nine thousand gold chains, elaborate silver pictures, gold coins and other amazing
artefacts hit the front pages in 1993 when it finally resurfaced in Moscow, where it
remains today.
Reunification brought together the impressive and long-divided collections of
Museum Island, which is being completely
restored and partially remodelled
in an
ambitious plan (
W
museumsinsel-berlin.de), begun in 1999 and due for completion in
2015, which will undoubtedly produce one of the world's greatest museum complexes.
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Admission
Individually Museum Island museums cost
€10 or €14; but a one-day Bereichskarte for all of them,
available to buy at any of the museums, costs €18. The
better-value Drei-Tage-Karte (three-day ticket; €24) covers
the permanent exhibitions in all the city's state museums
(see p.23) and a selection of the city's private museums too.
Entry to Museum Island museums is also included on the
Berlin Welcome Card and City Tour Card (see p.23). In all
cases special exhibitions cost extra.
Audio tours
Most exhibits are in German only, but some
collections do provide explanations and information sheets
in English and most have excellent, multilingual audio
tours included in the entrance price.
