A Definitive Guide to Most Museums in Berlin by Someone Who Has Been to Most of Them Twice

There’s something deeply personal about visiting the same museum multiple times. You start off wide-eyed and respectful, reading every plaque like you’re preparing for an exam. By the third visit, you’re breezing past ancient artifacts like they’re old acquaintances, mentally ranking marble statues by how dramatic their poses are, and developing extremely strong, extremely irrational opinions about 19th-century furniture. As a culture lover, I would be lying if I said I went in measured and gradual visits to Berlin’s many museums. But this would be a lie. In fact, I have stayed in one museum for several hours, seen multiple in a few minutes, stumbled into one by mistake and been rejected by others. It’s a tumultuous and yet deeply personal experience. With this in mind, let me give you a brief overview of the some of the top hits of my museum-going experience.

An Honorable Mention Before We Start: The Pergamon Museum (currently scheduled to reopen in 2037, so check back then for my updated blog post on the Gate of Ishtar ALONE).  This is probably the most hyped up museum in the entire city and well worth checking out when it reopens. 

The Alte NationalGalerie

You’ll find Caspar David Friedrich’s brooding wanderers and other Romantic types hanging out here. Think moody stares into foggy landscapes and lots of feelings in oil paint. Sizeable collection of German art and had a wide variety of landscape, portrait, and domestic scenes. Also various marble statues of mythical Greek and Roman figures, most partially dressed.  I would recommend to those of you who are among the more artistically inclined (or simple appreciators of genre painting, like yours truly). 

The Neues Museum 

An interesting mesh of Egyptian art and the memory culture of Berlin. Expect to see the world-famous Nefertiti Bust (don’t try to photograph her — the guards will yell at you), prehistoric artifacts, papyri, mummies, and a surprising number of skulls. Redesigned by David Chipperfield, it was completed in 2009. You can still see bits of shrapnel debris in most of the galleries. I had a two and a half hour tour of the place, which is nowhere near enough to cover all your major artifacts. It's comparable to the Louvre or British Museum, except the physical building itself is half the exhibit. 

The Altes Museum

This mostly features Greek and Roman antiquities — statues, urns, coins, and other general evidence of how it was to live two to three thousand years ago. Perfect for those amongst you who have studied enough Ancient Greek or Latin to actually apply it in a non-academic context. The rest of us plebeians can content ourselves with reading the informational plaques by the far side of each exhibit. I must confess that I am not enough of a sculpture admirer to come back a second time, but the classically inclined amongst us will no doubt be able to spend countless hours musing over clay and marble household objects. 

The Bode Museum

Sculptures galore (a lot of them religious and made of wood), Byzantine art, and one of the biggest coin collections in the world. Definitely take the time to ask about the theft of a Canadian coin decades ago...the wheelbarrow tidbit is sure to make even the most museum-voice conscious of us cackle.  I was actually pleasantly surprised with the content of this museum, as I do have a certain affinity for religious art and sculpture. I don't traditionally associate wood as a primary base for statues, but this figures as the main material for most of Western and Northern European religious art.