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Some Popular Berlin Museums that will Blow your Mind



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General Information about Germany

2.2. Some Popular Berlin Museums that will Blow your Mind
This Blog post is about some popular Berlin Museums that will blow your mind. Berlin is a treasure trove for cultured travellers. Whilst cranes clutter the skyline and the city changes almost beyond recognition, it’s still steeped in a monumental history, with a love of the archaic and aesthetic. It’s a city that’s not afraid to look to its own past to shed light on its future.
Covering everything from computer games to the darkly absurd Stasi surveillance methods, there truly is a Berlin museum for everyone. If you’re used to the free museums in London, the entry fees can seem a little steep. But with a bit of planning, you can still get your culture fix on a backpacker’s budget, especially if you book a stay in one of Berlin’s best hostels.
There are several free berlin museums, plus if you plan to visit more than one address on this list, then a Berlin museums pass can save you loads of money. Try the 24-hour Berlin Museums Island Pass (which gives you access to the 5 of the best Berlin Museums for €18, instead of €10-12 each) or the Welcome Card (which gives you free and reduced entry to loads of berlin museums and other attractions, plus unlimited public transport – from €19.90).
So which Berlin museums should you make a beeline for? Here’s our pick of the best.
Some Popular Berlin Museums that will Blow your Mind

  1. New Museum (Neues Museum)



Built in the 19th century by one of Berlin’s most famous and prolific architects, Friedrich August Stüler, the New Museum (“Neues Museum”) was all but destroyed during WW2. It remained a bombed-out ruin for years under GDR rule, before being restored and reopened by British architect David Chipperfield in 1999. The new building, made from recycled bricks and retaining some original elements, is an exquisite mix of old and new, or in Chipperfield’s words: “The contemporary reflects the lost, but without imitating it.”
nside the stunning building, you’ll find a vast collection of Egyptian art and classical antiquities, plus one of the city’s most famous artefacts: the bust of Nefertiti. Created in 1345 B.C, it’s one of the most copied pieces of Egyptian art ever and truly is a thing of beauty.
Address: Bodestraße, Mitte 10178

2. Berlin Wall Memorial


If you really want to understand the Berlin Wall, skip the crowds at the East Side Gallery and Checkpoint Charlie and head to this moving and totally free museum just north of the centre. The museum explains how and why the wall came about, with footage of its construction. A viewing platform allows you to see a section of the wall as it was, complete with death strip and watchtowers, whilst plaques at ground level mark the many escape tunnels dug by desperate East Germans, with information about how many people died or escaped there.
This is one of the most moving Berlin museums, and really helps those who didn’t experience the horror first hand understand the impact of the Berlin Wall on ordinary people’s lives.
Address: Bernauer Straße 111, Prenzlauer Berg

3. Pergamon Museum


This is one of Germany’s most visited museums, and with good reason. It houses extraordinary reconstructions of archaeological excavations including the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, the Mshatta Facade and the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from Babylon. If you fancy gazing in awe at something big and decadent, this is the place to do it.
Address: Bodestraße, Mitte

4. Stasi Museum


Located in the former Stasi HQ, this museum is a must for fans of the Oscar-winning classic The Lives Of Others, which was shot here. Walking around the huge, austere offices and boardrooms, you’ll get a chilling insight into life in East Berlin under Socialist rule. Keep an eye out for the primitive covert surveillance devices, featuring cameras clumsily hidden in watering cans, ties and behind buttons. What makes a visit to this Berlin museum so memorable, besides the aesthetics, is the unsettling mix of eeriness and absurdity.
Address: Ruschestraße 103, Haus 1, Lichtenberg 10365

5. Jewish Museum Berlin


Opened in 2001, in an old baroque building re-imagined by world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind, this is a hugely important and popular Berlin museum. The permanent exhibition focuses on Jewish life in Germany through history, with artworks, texts, and plenty of interactive elements. For a few Euros, you can even purchase a piece of art by a talented Berlin-based Jewish artist from a vending machine. Of course, the museum also explores the devastating period for Jews in Berlin leading up to and during WW2. Viewed alongside the other exhibits, the all-too-familiar facts of the holocaust are somehow all the more disturbing.
Address: Lindenstraße 9-14, Kreuzberg 10969

6. Natural History Museum


When is a museum more than a museum? Well, when that museum is also a research facility, dedicated to the study of life and planet Earth, meaning a constantly evolving collection as new and important discoveries are made. The collection consists of over 30 million items and counting – more are being added as you read this – covering zoology, palaeontology, geology and mineralogy. That means there are bugs and rocks and snails and lizards and fossils and fishes, birds, mammals, snakes, frogs, plants, meteorites, you name it…
Address: Invalidenstraße 43, Mitte 10115

7. Museum Berggruen


Don’t be put off by its location on the western outskirts of the city; this is one of the best Berlin museums and home to some seriously impressive works from the likes of Giacometti, Picasso, Klee and Matisse. Although it doesn’t look it on the map, this Berlin modern art museum, located next door to Charlottenburg Palace, is actually surprisingly easy to reach with a fast S-Bahn train from Alexanderplatz in the centre taking around 30 minutes.
Address: Schloßstraße 1, Charlottenburg 14059

8. Topography of Terror


This free Berlin museum focuses on the terrible crimes that Hitler’s SS committed throughout Europe, with photographs and texts, as well as audio and film recordings. Located on the site of its former headquarters, the open-air exhibition is a shocking, sobering experience, and does what any good museum should do: it makes you reflect on what it is to be alive.
Address: Niederkirchnerstraße 8, Kreuzberg 10963

9. Old National Gallery


Dreamed up by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who imagined a “sanctuary for art and science”, the museum is a temple-like building home to an extraordinary art collection, including Romantic and Impressionist masterpieces, works by Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Schinkel, and a world-class collection of paintings by German Realist Adolph Menzel. The seed of the Old National Gallery (“Alte Nationalgalerie”) dates back to a gift from a banker in the 19th century, putting pay to the common notion that all bankers are wicked and greedy individuals (at least, they didn’t use to be!).
Address: Bodestraße 10178, Mitte

10. Bode Museum


This exquisitely designed museum, extensively renovated and reopened in 2006, mainly exhibits sculptures, including masterpieces such as Donatello’s ‘Pazzi Madonna’ and Antonio Canova’s ‘Dancer’, the iconic ‘Tarquinius und Lucretia’ by Petro Tacca, as well as an important German sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider and Ignaz Günther. There’s also an impressive collection of Byzantine art ranging from the 3rd to the 15th century, including carvings, mosaics and religious objects. As you walk around the museum among the relics and statues, you’ll start to feel a wonderful calm descend.
Address: Am Kupfergraben, Mitte 10117

11. DDR Museum


Despite the potentially dour subject matter, the DDR Museum paints a fascinating and surprisingly fun and colourful illustration of life in East Berlin before the wall came down. This is partly thanks to its interactive nature: ‘Everything is waiting to be touched or felt’ here. You can have a poke around the reconstruction of an East German apartment, gaudy wallpaper and all; find out what it was like to sit in an interrogation room; listen to examples of East German pop music, and even explore the cheeky exhibition detailing the Communist fascination with nudity. The museum is noisy, lively, and altogether quite unexpected. Don’t forget to try a bottle of East German-style lemony cola (named “Vita Cola”) at the cafe afterwards. Very refreshing indeed.
Address: Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 1, Mitte 10178

12. Käthe Kollwitz Museum


Dedicated to one of Germany’s most influential female artists, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum houses the biggest collection of timeless drawings, etchings and sculptures. Housed in a grand residential building in West Berlin, these timeless works depict war, poverty, suffering, and love. There is a deep sense of humanity in every work, and despite the often bleak subject matter, you will leave feeling reborn.
Address: Fasanenstraβe 24, Charlottenburg 10719

13. Old Museum


Housed in an iconic Neoclassical building that was completed in 1830, the Old Museum (“Altes Museum”) contains the city’s collection of classical antiquities, including works from ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, and one of the largest collections of Etruscan art outside of Italy. Prepare to be dazzled by bronzes, urns, statues, ceramics, carved ivory, precious stones, vases and cultural artefacts.
Address: Am Lustgarten 10178, Mitte

14. Deutsche Kinemathek



Berlin’s role in the history of cinema cannot be understated: the film-making capital of Germany, the city pioneered the horror film (with iconic films such as Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari), science fiction (with Metropolis), and was a massive influence on American cinema, with the Hollywood melodrama and crime genres of the 1950s having their genesis in German film. This rich history can be explored at the Kinemathek on Potsdamerplatz, a very modern film museum that delves back into the origin of the artform, and begins with a marvellously immersive walk through a futuristic hall of mirrors.
Address: Potsdamer Straße 2, Mitte 10785

15. The Hohenschoenhausen (Stasi Prison)


A fascinating and at times frightening museum, this former Stasi prison is a little way out of the city, and not much publicised, but well worth the visit. Machine gun towers, barbed wire, cells without windows, water torture facilities… this is not a place for the faint-hearted. But, combined with a visit to the Stasimuseum, it paints a necessary and grim picture of a notorious era in Berlin’s history. The guided tours are often led by former inmates of the prison and are well worth doing.


Address: Genslerstraße 66, Alt-Hohenschönhausen 13055

16. Allied Museum


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