Museum Island

Museum Island is the northern tip of the island in the Spree where Berlin began, and over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Prussian kings and their successors filled it with five monumental museums, one after another, as a sanctuary for art and science. Together they form one of the great museum complexes of the world, and the whole ensemble has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. The Altes Museum, with its long colonnade facing the Lustgarten, shows Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities. The Neues Museum, rebuilt after wartime ruin, holds the Egyptian collection with the bust of Nefertiti, alongside prehistory and early history. The Alte Nationalgalerie, raised like a temple on a high plinth, is the home of nineteenth-century painting, from Caspar David Friedrich to the French Impressionists. The Bode-Museum, at the very tip of the island where the river divides, holds sculpture, Byzantine art and a vast coin cabinet. And the Pergamonmuseum, famous for the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, has been closed for refurbishment since October 2023. The good news is official and dated: the north wing and central building, with the Pergamon Altar, the Hellenistic hall and the complete Museum of Islamic Art, reopen on 4 June 2027. The south wing, which holds the Ishtar Gate and the main Near Eastern collections, stays closed for years longer. In the meantime, the Pergamonmuseum. Das Panorama, a temporary building just across the water, combines around eighty original sculptures with a 360-degree panorama of the ancient city by the artist Yadegar Asisi. The modern James Simon Gallery is the main entrance and ticket hall, with lockers, audio guides, a cafe and an underground link into the Neues Museum. A Museum Island day ticket, in the mid-twenties in euros, covers all the open museums, and under-18s go free.

How to plan the day: no one should try to see everything, and the island rewards a choice. Most first-timers start with the Neues Museum and Nefertiti, which has its own timed slots, then add one more museum according to taste: the Altes Museum for classical sculpture and the Roman portraits, the Alte Nationalgalerie for Friedrich and Menzel and the Impressionists, or the Bode-Museum for its Renaissance sculpture and its grand domed halls. The Panorama is a good choice for anyone disappointed by the Pergamon closure, and it is included in the day ticket. Upper floors in some of the museums open a little later than the ground floors, and the museums generally keep Tuesday-to-Sunday hours, roughly 10am to 6pm, with Monday closures across most of the island, so check the calendar before you build your week around it.

Tickets and timing: the free first-Sunday scheme ended in December 2024, so every visit now needs a ticket, and in busy periods the timed slots for the Neues Museum sell out first. Booking the day ticket ahead means you can walk past the ticket queue at the James Simon Gallery; lockers there are the easiest way to leave bags, since large bags are not allowed in the galleries. Lunch is simplest at one of the museum cafes or in the streets around Hackescher Markt, five minutes away on foot. Couples and art lovers should save the Alte Nationalgalerie for late afternoon, when the light through its windows suits the Romantic landscapes.

Around the island: the Lustgarten, the lawn in front of the Altes Museum, is a good place to rest between museums, with the dome of Berlin Cathedral on one side and the Humboldt Forum, in the rebuilt royal palace, across the road. The colonnades between the museums and the riverbank paths are lovely in every season, and the island is also the starting point of many Spree cruises. In the run-up to the 2027 reopening and the 200th anniversary of the museums, there will be more exhibitions and events than usual, so it is worth checking the programme of the State Museums for your dates.