漏 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David von Becker
View of the Neues Museum in Berlin-Mitte.
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Visitors walk through the staircase hall of the Neues Museum.
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The bust of Queen Nefertiti (around 1340 BC) in the Neues Museum.
漏 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David von Becker
James-Simon-Galerie with the Neues Museum in the background.
The Neues Museum presents the development of prehistoric and early cultures in Eurasia from the Palaeolithic Age to the High Middle Ages.
The Neues Museum (New Museum) was one of the most important building projects of its time in Prussia. Constructed by Friedrich August Stüler between 1843 and 1855, the building is an outstanding document of 19th century museum building, both as part of the overall ensemble on Museum Island and as a stand-alone structure. Severely damaged during the Second World War, it has been extensively restored and rebuilt since 2003 under the direction of British star architect David Chipperfield. The Neues Museum houses almost 9000 objects from three important collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin on around 8000 square meters of exhibition space on four levels.
The Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in the north wing of the Neues Museum is presented on a scale never seen before. The highlights of the Egyptian Museum are the Green Head, three newly restored sacrificial chambers from the Old Kingdom and the Amarna Collection. The latter came to Berlin in 1913 on the basis of an official division of finds and thanks to the patron James Simon. It also includes the famous bust of Nefertiti, which is the only object in the North Dome Hall to be presented in a four-meter-high display case.
The Museum of Prehistory and Early History displays its extensive collections together with objects from the Collection of Classical Antiquities on three levels of the Neues Museum. Among the outstanding objects in the collection are the Bronze Age Berlin Gold Hat, whose mysterious symbolism illustrates how precisely calendrical knowledge was preserved back then, and the skulls of the Neanderthal man from Le Moustier and the man from Combe Capelle. The world-famous Troy collection, which Heinrich Schliemann donated to the Berlin museums and whose gold treasure was taken away from Berlin as spoils of war by the Red Army and is still kept in Moscow today, is also part of the exhibition. The oldest object in the Neues Museum is a 700,000-year-old hand axe from the Palaeolithic period, one of around 5700 objects on display at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. The most recent object also comes from this collection: a piece of barbed wire from the Berlin Wall.
漏 Tobias Droz/BerlinOnline
Unbestritten das kulturelle Zentrum Berlins. Das Neue Museum mit der Büste der Nofretete, das Alte Museum, das Deutsche Historische Museum oder das Pergamonmuseum sind weltweit beachtete Kultureinrichtungen. more
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The Institute for Museum Research of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation annually publishes a list of the most visited museums. These are the the Top 10 museums in Berlin. more
