PERGAMON MUSEUM
Antiquities on Berlin’s Museum Island
I
rarely can say it about a museum, but have to admit a step into the
main hall of Berlin’s Pergamon Museum is breathtaking.
(*note The Pergomon Alter will be closed for renovations for some time starting 2015 but parts of the rest of the museum will stay open.) There before you, filling a giant room are the steps to a 2,000 year
old temple from 165 BC, with relief sculptures around its side depicting
the battles of the Gods and Giants. First described by the Roman writer
Lucius Ampelius as the Great Altar of Pergamon, the ancient city on
the Turkish peninsula and its Acropolis were destroyed sometime
before the middle ages, then rediscovered by a German road engineer
in the
mid 1800’s. Excavated during the imperial years,
the
pieces of the temple and its signature sculptural adornment of the
altar steps
- the Telphos Frieze, depicting the victory of Telphos, the mythical
son
of Hercules
to whom
the Pergamons traced their decent, in his battle with the
Hellenistic Gods - were moved Berlin, and found its current home in
the museum built specifically for it in 1930. The altar as it stands
in the
museum is only part of the west side of the original Pergamon Acropolis.
The
Pergamon Museum is one of five Berlin State Museums on what is referred
to as Museums Insel, the museum island, most constructed between 1900
and 1930, with the Pergamon the last to be completed. It is slightly
misleading in that it is right in the center of Berlin behind
the Dom
Cathedral
and
only an island as it divided by the Spree River on one side and small
canal on the other. The other museums within a few blocks are the Altes
Museum, Egyptian Museum, the National Gallerie and the Bode Museum (see Bode Museum Byzantine).
The entire complex has undergone reconstruction since 1999 and flagship
Neues Museum has just re-opened (see Neues
Museum Egyptian Collection) around the corner from the
Pergamon.
Collections at Pergamon Museum
The
Pergamon is actually three museums representing
antiquities from Mesopotamia, the Collection of Classical
Antiquities, occupying the architectural halls and the sculpture wing,
the Museum
of the Ancient Near East and the Museum of Islamic Art. Impressive
for its scale in another hall are the massive formidable walls of
the Ishtar Gate and
Processional Way of Babylon,
almost 50 feet high of blue tile decorated with golden lions. Other
famous exhibits are the Market Gate of Miletus of intricately carved
stone and the Syrian Aleppo Room Wall Panels, and statues, mosaics
and tapestries,
representing, Islamic Art and Classical Antiquities.
Visiting
the Pergamon Museum
A
single ticket of €18.00 allows admission to all of the Museum
Insel state museums (€12 for a single museum),€9
for students, disabled and the unemployed (a particularly German oddity).
A 3-Day Museum Pass is €24. The museum offers
guided
tours and
audio tours a several languages. Photography is permitted in the
Pergamon without flash. The nearest U-Bahn stop is the Hackescher
Markt or Friedrichstrasse
S-Bahn. © Bargain
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See Also:
BERLIN MUSEUM FOR FILM AND TELEVISION
DEUTSCHES
TECHNIK MUSEUM BERLIN
STEPHEN VERONA
EUROPEAN GALLERY ART PRINTS
