Berlin Island Museum
Berlin hosts one of the most magnificent museums on “Museum Island”. Museum Island is made up of 5 major buildings. The first one which marked the beginning of the unique centre for history and culture was the “Old museum” was built in 1823. The New Museum, located behind the Old Museum was open in 1859.  In 1870 the National Gallery opened after 10 years of construction.

By the time the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum on Museum Island (today the Bodemuseum) had opened, it was clear that the museum was not large enough to host all the art and archaeological treasures coming from German excavations. Excavations were done in Babylon, Uruk, Assur, Miletus, Priener and Egypt, and objects from these sites could not be properly displayed there.

As early as 1907, Wilhelm von Bode, the director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum had plans to build a new museum nearby to accommodate ancient architecture, German post-antiquity art, and Middle Eastern and Islamic art.The last of the museums is the Pergamon Museum, completed in 1930, which hosts original-size, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, and the market gate of Miletus, consisting of parts taken from the original excavation sites.

Munick Kunstareal
Leo von Klenze's Old Pinakothek from 1836, in its time the biggest museum structure worldwide and shining example for galleries from Rome to St. Petersburg forms together with the New Pinakothek the core of the Kunstareal (art area). Both museums house magnificent masterpieces of historical European painting and sculpture and thanks to the collection of the Pinakothek of Modern Art reach far into the 20th century. Furthermore the Kunstareal houses the State Antiquities Collection, the Glyptothek, the State Graphics Collection and the famous Lehnbachhaus known for the masterpieces of the expressionist movement Der Blaue Reiter "The Blue Rider".