Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
rococo-style hall with marble statues of Frederick the Great and his generals. The galleries
radiate from both sides of this axis and continue upstairs.
Skulpturensammlung
The majority of rooms showcase the Bode's Sculpture Collection, which British Museum
director Neil MacGregor hailed as 'the most comprehensive display of European sculpture
anywhere'. The works span the arc of artistic creativity from the early Middle Ages to the
late 18th century, with a special focus on the Italian Renaissance. There are priceless master-
pieces like Donatello's
Pazzi Madonna
, Giovanni Pisano's
Man of Sorrows
relief, and the
portrait busts of Desiderio da Settignano. Staying on the ground floor, you can cruise from
the Italians to the Germans by admiring the 12th-century
Gröninger Empore
, a church gal-
lery from a former monastery that is considered a major work of the Romanesque period.
Most of the German sculptures are upstairs, with an entire room dedicated to late-Gothic
master carver Tilman Riemenschneider. Highlights include the exquisite
St Anne and Her
Three Husbands
as well as the
Four Evangelists
. In the next room, you can compare
Riemenschneider's emotiveness to that of his contemporaries Hans Multscher and Nicolaus
Gerhaert van Leyden. The monumental
knight-saints
from the period of the Thirty Years'
War are another impressive standout on this floor.
THE MYSTERY OF PRIAM'S TREASURE
Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90) was not a particularly careful or skilled archaeologist,
but he was certainly one of the luckiest. Obsessed with the idea of uncovering
Homer's Troy, he hit the mother lode in 1873 near Hisarlik in today's Turkey, putting
paid to the belief that the town mentioned in the
Iliad
was mere myth. He also fam-
ously unearthed a hoard of gold and silver vessels, vases and jewellery, which he be-
lieved had once belonged to King Priam. The fact that it later turned out to be a good
thousand years older than Homer's Troy doesn't make the find any less spectacular.
Schliemann illegally smuggled the cache to Berlin, had to pay a fine to the Ottoman
Empire and eventually donated it to Berlin's ethnological museum. In a strange twist
of fate, the treasure was carted off as WWII war booty by the Soviets, who remained
mum about its whereabouts until 1993. It remains at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow
to this day, leaving only replicas in Berlin.
Museum für Byzantische Kunst
