Berlin's Neues Museum Opens after Seven Decades

Long lines snaked across Berlin's Lustgarten this morning. The line started gathering momentum as early as 7 am on this cold, grey, blustery day -- three hours before Berlin's Neues Museum opened to the public.

This is a great day for Berlin -- the renovations by British architect David Chipperfield, which took ten years of discussion, debate, planning and construction, is brought to light; the last of the five-museum ensemble in Berlin's Museum Island is now in place; and the Neues Museum is open for regular viewing for the first time in seventy years.

Phoenix from the Ashes
Built by Friedrich August Stüler between 1855 and 1859, the museum was hastily emptied of its exhibits at the start of the Second World War. By 1945 there was nothing left of the beautiful neoclassical building except rubble. After the war, the GDR repaired the worst of the damage, but the building remained a scarred, war-torn ruin for about another half century.

photo: ddp

When Chipperfield first took on the project in the 1990s, he saw a ruin forgotten by history. His idea -- radical, audacious, fiercely contested and just as fiercely defended -- was to rebuild the museum without letting go of the original materials. Into the new structure, with modern features such as slim pillars and glass roofs, he incorporated parts of the original structure -- fragments of frescoes, wall, mosaics and raw brick, still bearing the marks of ravage by bullets, fire-bombs, and exposure to the forces of nature for over half a century.


Statement in Marble
The museum's most dramatic feature is probably the central staircase in cement and marble, sweeping up toward the high ceiling, stripped of decorative elements. Chipperfield's design recalls at once the original ornamental staircase and the image of its burned out remnants.

photo: ddp

Nefertiti

The Neues Museum  houses artifacts from the Egyptian Museum, its Papyrus Collection, and the Museum of Pre-and-Early History. The star of the show will undoubtedly be the 3,400-year old bust of Nefertiti in the north cupola, her gaze shooting across the entire length of the building, through hall after hall, era after era, finally meeting that of the Sun God Helios in the south cupola, in a breathtaking axis of perspective.

photo: Getty Images

Musuem in a Museum

The Neues Museum is more than "just" a museum. Like the Reichstag dome and the Gedächtniskirche, it shows how the city grapples with the problem of restoring and renewing without forgetting. But probably no other building in Berlin comes close to the Neues Museum in the way its reconstruction has embraced both the original architectural vision and the damage of war in its concept of renewal.

The Neues Museum is located on the Museum Island, Bodestraße 3, 10178 Berlin. Public transportation options include: S-Bahn to Hackescher Markt, tram M4, M5, M6 to Hackescher Markt, Bus 100, 200 to Lustgarten.

The museum is free to the public this Saturday and Sunday ( expect very long lines). From Monday on, the museum is open every day: from 10:00 to 18:00 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday; from 10:.00 to 20:.00 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets cost 10 EUR (5 EUR reduced). Tickets are valid for entry within a specific half-hour window of time to minimize long waits. You can order tickets for your preferred window of time online at www.neues-museum.de
There is no restriction on the amount of time you can spend inside.


More information is at www.neues-museum.de