On our last day in Berlin Nancy was feeling a bit better but wanting to take it easy nonetheless. I had a long list of things I 'had' to do and see on this final day so off I went. The highlight has to be the famous Pergamon museum. All the guide books mention it, it’s on every list, every top ten compilation, but all the hoo-ha aside – nothing prepares you for the glory of this museum. The outside of the museum is (like so much of Berlin) a building site; however once signs are followed around the fences, diggers, pipes and cranes; the museum is quite astonishing.
The Pergamon is unique in that it houses original, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus. Both of these extraordinary artifacts were transported from Turkey, and since its opening in 1930, there has been controversy over the legitimacy of the acquisition of the collection. Many have suggested that the collection be returned to Turkey. It would appear that during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century German archeologists were busy packing entire classical sites in crates and shipping them to Berlin where they were reconstructed.
The star of the Classical Antiquities department is the Zeus Altar (180-160 BC), which is so large that it has a huge room all to itself. The frieze took over 20 years to reassemble from thousands of fragments uncovered in modern-day Bergama, Turkey. Steps lead from the museum floor up to the colonnade. Most fascinating is the frieze around the base, which depicts the struggle of the Olympian gods against the Titans. It is strikingly life-like, with figures that project as much as a foot from the background.
This department also contains the Market Gate of Miletus as well as sculptures from many Greek and Roman cities, including a statue of a goddess holding a pomegranate (575 BC), found in southern Attica, where it had been buried for 2,000 years. It was so well preserved that flecks of the original paint are still visible on her garments.
The Near East Museum contains one of the largest collections anywhere of antiquities from ancient Babylonia, Persia, and Assyria. Among the exhibits is the Processional Way of Babylon with the Ishtar Gate, dating from 580 BC, and the throne hall of King Nebuchadnezzar II (604 - 562 BC). Cuneiform clay tablets document a civilization that created ceramics, glass, and metal objects while Europe was still overrun with primitive tribes.
Upstairs is the Pergamon’s third collection, the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Museum of Islamic Art). Standouts here include the fortress-like, 8th-century caliph’s palace from Mshatta in the desert of what today is Jordan, and the 17th-century Aleppo Room from the house of a Christian merchant in Syria, with its richly painted, wood-panelled walls.
It was a spectacular place to be, to see, and had I not been trying to see as much as possible, I could have easily spent the whole day in the Pergamon Museum exploring all that she had to offer.
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