Berlin's rich museum scene - strolling through 200 years of history

NZ Herald

20-05-2025

The Bode Museum's round Baroque facade, standing against the Spree, is probably one of the most recognised images of Berlin. Inside, the museum has everything from 3rd-century Byzantine art to 16th-century Renaissance art, with a slant towards Christian religious sculpture. There are numerous pieces in marble, wood and bronze, by sculptors like Donatello (Pazzi Madonna), Bernini (Satyr with Panther) and Pisano (Man of Sorrows), along with vibrant mosaics from medieval churches in Constantinople and Ravenna.
German Spy Museum
Before Ethan Hunt started globetrotting for impossible missions, Berlin was the capital of spies. The Deutsches Spionagemuseum has hundreds of artefacts from World War II and the Cold War, from lipstick cameras to wearable radio interceptors to cipher machines, and lets you play spy as well, decrypting coded messages and finding hidden bugs. A highlight is the Laser Maze, where you can live out your Ocean's 12 dreams and jump and twist your way out of a maze of laser beams.
Museum of Communication
Alexander Graham Bell may get all the credit for inventing the telephone, but 16 years prior, German inventor Philip Reis revealed his 'telephone', which transmitted voice via electronic signals and can still be found in the Museum for Communication alongside the Enigma cipher machine. The museum has a couple of friendly robots in the atrium, and many themed collections on communication objects, from postcards to mail coaches to televisions and even a pneumatic tube system.
Naturkunde Museum
With 30 million specimens covering botany, zoology, minerals and fossils, Berlin's Natural History Museum is among the most comprehensive in Europe. The Dinosaur Hall in the central atrium has a brachiosaurus, Europe's only original T-rex skeleton and the world's best preserved archaeopteryx fossil. The mineral collection includes 5000 impact crater rocks, the only collection in Europe, while the wet collection – floor to ceiling shelves of thousands of specimen jars kept for research – inspires awe.
Kunstgewerbemuseum
For more than 150 years, the Museum of Decorative Arts has been collecting European arts and crafts, from 12th-century tapestries to Balenciaga gowns from the 1960s. It has a particularly impressive collection of Renaissance and Baroque-era furniture and crockery, such as gilded cabinets, Delft faiences and Emile Gallé's glasswork, and its temporary exhibitions cover diverse topics from regenerative design principles to historical Parisian fashion.
Jewish Museum
Berlin's first Jewish Museum was founded to showcase the community's art collection, six days before the Nazis came to power. The modern museum that opened in 2001 reflects on all that happened after. Installations like Fallen Leaves, a corridor strewn with iron plates with open-mouthed faces carved into them, and Catastrophe, a roomful of banners detailing every Nazi decree against the Jewish population, stay with you long after you leave.
Neue Nationalgalerie
With a Modernist building that was the last work of German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie is dedicated to showcasing art from the 20th century onwards. Picassos, Matisses and Rothkos abound, exploring topics such as art's response to post-war societal upheavals. Temporary exhibitions feature work of modern artists like Nan Goldin and Yoko Ono.
Designpanoptikum
In an unassuming grey building near Museuminsel sits Berlin's museum for bizarre objects, housing artist Vlad Korneev's collection of unusual industrial objects arranged in surreal ways. Old movie cameras and film projectors sit beside odd-looking inventions like fire beaters (a steel broom to put out small fires) and an iron lung (a ventilation chamber for polio patients); among the weirder creative arrangements is a trumpet that appears to sprout from the nose of a first aid prop mannequin. There is no explanatory signage, but the owner offers tours to explain his vision behind the collection.
Computerspielemuseum
Stepping into the Computer Games Museum is a Back to the Future experience. Some 300 exhibits cover the history of gaming, from early East German games like Piko Dat to a paper set of Dungeons and Dragons to early consoles like Nimrod and Gameboy. The playable arcade games are a highlight, from Computer Space, the first arcade game, to classics like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, to PainStation, a Pong-like game for adults, where missing a ball results in physical penalties like heat and mild electric shocks.