The Pergamon Museum is a listed building on Museum Island in the historic center of Berlin and part of the UNESCO World Heritage. It was built from 1910 to 1930 by order of German Emperor Wilhelm II according to plans by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann in Stripped Classicism style. Currently, the Pergamonmuseum is home to the Antikensammlung including the famous Pergamon Altar, the Vorderasiatisches Museum and the Museum für Islamische Kunst. Parts of the building are closed for renovation until 2023.
The new, larger Pergamon Museum was built as a three-wing complex. The museum now houses three of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections: the Collection of Classical Antiquities, Museum of Ancient Near East, and the Museum of Islamic Art. The impressive reconstructions of massive archaeological structures – the Pergamon Altar, Market Gate of Miletus, the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from Babylon, and the Mshatta Facade – have made the Pergamonmuseum famous throughout the world, with the result that it is the most visited museum at the Staatliche Museen and in Germany as a whole.
The Pergamonmuseum is home to one of the world’s largest collections of the architecture of antiquity. The Market Gate of Miletus was erected around 100 AD as an opulent gateway between two plazas squares. Measuring almost 29 metres across and 17 metres high, it is the only monument to have been fully re-installed reconstructed in the Pergamonmuseum, and alongside the Pergamon Altar, is the most important monument in the Antikensammlung.
Shown in an area covering 2,000 square metres the exhibits convey an impression of six thousand years of history, culture and art in the ancient Near East.
Fourteen rooms are devoted to this collection in the southern wing of the Pergamonmuseum. The collection contains many important examples of architecture, reliefs and smaller objects. Some are of great world significance and were once excavated by German archaeologists. They originate from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and northern Syrian/eastern Anatolian regions which today include Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Pergamon Museum, Ishtar gate
The bull (unicorn) in the bas-relief on the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Persian warriors
