Pergamon Museum

Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum is located on Berlin's Museum Island in Germany. It was constructed between 1910 and 1930 and opened to the public in 1930. This museum, however, was entirely designed around its collections—for good reason. Every museum has its own prized treasures, but one with a 1,200-square-meter collection and artifacts as tall as 14 meters? There’s only one of its kind. The Pergamon Museum attracts one million visitors annually, making it Germany’s most visited museum.

The Pergamon Museum mainly consists of three major sections: the classical collection focusing on Greek and Roman antiquities, the Islamic Art Museum featuring artworks from the 8th to the 19th century, and the Middle East Museum showcasing Assyrian, Semitic, and Babylonian cultures. At its core is the classical collection’s Pergamon Altar—a marble structure spanning 35.64 meters in width and 33.4 meters in depth. While some museums in Europe and America do house entire ancient buildings like Egyptian temples, none can match the scale and artistry of this one—no wonder the museum is named after it.

The museum’s collections include not only the altar but also city gates and streets, such as the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from the Middle East Museum. The magnificent Ishtar Gate was the northern gate of ancient Babylon, standing 14 meters high and 30 meters wide. Its walls are covered with blue-glazed bricks adorned with intricate reliefs of lions, bulls, and Babylonian dragons—its splendor is beyond imagination. Opposite the gate is a reconstructed section of the Processional Way, once the main route to the temple, lined with about 120 glazed brick reliefs of symbolic divine lions. The atmosphere of ancient Babylon comes alive here. And that’s not all—the Market Gate of Miletus from the classical collection (originally built around 120 AD), the 8th-century Mshatta Facade from Jordan in the Islamic Art Museum, and the 17th-century Aleppo Room are also among the museum’s most famous treasures.

Pergamon Museum

Must-visit reason: Germany’s most visited museum

Continent: Europe

Country/Region: Germany

Province/State: Berlin

City: Berlin