Museum Island,Berlin:An outstanding museum complex with a unique collection of Art,Cultural Artefacts from Europe. Natural history museum with vast range of specimens exhibit the origin of the Earth & the life on the Planet.

We reached Berlin on 13/8/22 on a two day tour of the historic landmarks & mueums.On our second day we visited some of the finest museums of Berlin exhibiting unique collection of art & artefacts from all over Europe & Mediteranean region!It was a wonderful experience seeing vast variety of specimens in the Natural history museum.

Museum Island(Museumsinsel), Berlin

The Museumsinsel Berlin is one of the country’s major sights, attracting hundreds of thousands of guests from all over the world each year. This unparalleled museum ensemble was the cradle of today’s Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and is where it showcases its magnificent collections of art and cultural artefacts spanning several millennia from Europe and the wider Mediterranean region. In 1999 UNESCO announced that it recognized the Museumsinsel Berlin as a place of world cultural heritage for being ‘a unique ensemble of museum buildings illustrating the development of modern museum design over the course of more than a century’.

The Museum Island (German: Museumsinsel) is a museum complex on the northern part of the Spree Island in the historic heart of Berlin. It is one of the most visited sights of Germany’s capital and one of the most important museum sites in Europe. Built from 1830 to 1930 by order of the Prussian Kings according to plans by five architects. It consists of the Altes Museum, the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode-Museum and the Pergamonmuseum. As Museum Island includes all of Spree Island north of the Unter den Linden, the Berliner Dom is also located here, near the Lustgarten. To the south, the reconstructed Berlin Palace houses the Humboldt Forum museum and opened in 2020. In 2019, a new visitor center and art gallery, the James Simon Gallery, was opened.The new reception building – the James Simon Gallery – functions as a visitor center. From here, visitors to Museum Island should have access to four of the five museums.The Museum Island is so-called for the complex of internationally significant museums, all part of the Berlin State Museums, that occupy the island’s northern part:

The Altes Museum (Old Museum) named as the Königliches Museum when it was built on August 3, 1830, until it was renamed in 1841. The museum was completed on the orders of Karl Friedrich Schinkel.The Altes Museum, “Old Museum” in English, was built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and is a masterpiece of classicist architecture. The rotunda in this first museum building in Berlin is stunning: modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, it makes for a fitting prelude to the collection of antiquities on display.

The Neues Museum (New Museum) finished in 1859 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, a student of Schinkel. Destroyed in World War II, it was rebuilt under the direction of David Chipperfield for the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and re-opened in 2009.The Neues Museum (“New Museum”) exhibits objects from the collections of the Egyptian Museum, the Papyrus Collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, and the Collection of Classical Antiquities. The museum was built according to the plans of Friedrich August Stüler and was almost destroyed during the Second World War. After thorough restoration, the building is now an impressive symbiosis of old and new.

The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) completed in 1876, also according to designs by Friedrich August Stüler, to host a collection of 19th-century art donated by banker Joachim H. W. WagenerNext to the Neues Museum stands Stüler’s second work: the Alte Nationalgalerie (“Old National Gallery”). The 19th-century building houses paintingd and sculptures and resembles an ancient temple on a high pedestal. The equestrian statue on the flight of steps represents King Frederick William IV, who had the idea for the Museum Island. The museum exhibits works by famous French Impressionists such as Manet, Monet, Renoir, along with Romantic paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The Bode Museum on the island’s northern tip, opened in 1904 and then called Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. It exhibits the sculpture collections and late Antique and Byzantine art.The magnificent Bode Museum makes up the northern tip of Museum Island. The building, designed by Ernst von Ihne, houses a collection of sacred art from Byzantium as well as European sculptures from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

The Pergamon Museum, constructed in 1930. It contains multiple reconstructed immense and historically significant buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon.The absolute crowd-pleaser of Museum Island is Alfred Messel’s Pergamon Museum., Built between 1907 and 1930, the museum features archaeological finds from antiquity, the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, and the impressive Pergamon Altar.

The DDR Museum is a museum in the centre of Berlin. The museum is located in the former governmental district of East Germany, right on the river Spree, opposite the Berlin Cathedral. The museum is the 11th most visited museum in Berlin.^[1] Its exhibition depicts life in the former East Germany (known in German as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) in a direct “hands-on” way. For example, a covert listening device (“bug”) gives visitors the sense of being “under surveillance”.^[2] One can also try DDR clothes on in the recreated tower block apartment, change TV channels or use an original typewriter. The exhibition has three themed areas: “Public Life”; “State and Ideology” and “Life in a Tower Block”.^[3] Each of them is presented under a critical light: the positives as well as the negatives sides of the DDR are explored in this exhibition. A total of 35 modules illustrate these three themes The museum was opened on July 15, 2006, as a private museum.

The Natural History Museum (German: Museum für Naturkunde) is a natural history museum located in Berlin, Germany. It exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history-the origin of Earth & of the life on Earth. The museum houses more than 30 million zoological, paleontological, and mineralogical specimens, including more than ten thousand type specimens. It is famous for two exhibits: the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a Giraffatitan skeleton), and a well-preserved specimen of the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx. The museum’s mineral collections date back to the Prussian Academy of Sciences of 1700. Important historic zoological specimens include those recovered by the German deep-sea Valdiva expedition (1898–99), the German Southpolar Expedition (1901–03), and the German Sunda Expedition (1929–31). Expeditions to fossil beds in Tendaguru in former Deutsch Ostafrika (today Tanzania) unearthed rich paleontological treasures. The collections are so extensive that less than 1 in 5000 specimens is exhibited, and they attract researchers from around the world. Additional exhibits include a mineral collection representing 75% of the minerals in the world, a large meteor collection, the largest piece of amber in the world; exhibits of the now-extinct quagga, huia, and tasmanian tiger, and “Bobby” the gorilla, a Berlin Zoo celebrity from the 1920s and 1930s

The Berlin Cathedral (German: Berliner Dom), also known as, the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, is a monumental German Evangelical church and dynastic tomb (House of Hohenzollern) on the Museum Island in central Berlin. Having its origins as a castle chapel for the Berlin Palace, several structures have served to house the church since the 1400s. The present collegiate church was built from 1894 to 1905 by order of German Emperor William II according to plans by Julius Raschdorff in Renaissance and Baroque Revival styles. The listed building is the largest Protestant church in Germany and one of the most important dynastic tombs in Europe.[2] In addition to church services, the cathedral is used for state ceremonies, concerts and other events.

Checkpoint Charlie: Background and name:
During the time of the divided Berlin , Checkpoint Charlie was one of nine checkpoints on the border of the American and Russian sectors, at a passage of the Berlin Wall on Friedrichstraße . After World War II , both Germany and Berlin were divided into four zones of occupation : an American , a British , a French , and a Soviet zone of occupation Checkpoint Charlie was the third checkpoint that one had to pass on the way.
Checkpoint Charlie was the only checkpoint where the diplomatic corps and other foreigners (everyone except West Berliners, West Germans, and Allied Control Council residents ) could enter East Berlin by road. By public transport, the nearby Bahnhof Friedrichstraße was the only way to enter the country as a tourist.

The Berliner Fernsehturm or Berlin Television Tower: Its a television tower in central Berlin, Germany. Located in the Marien quarter, close to Alexanderplatz in the locality and district of Mitte, the tower was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was intended to be both a symbol of Communist power and of the city. It remains a landmark today, visible throughout the central and some suburban districts of Berlin. With its height of 368 metres (including antenna) it is the tallest structure in Germany, and the third-tallest structure in the European Union. When built it was the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in the world after the Ostankino Tower, the Empire State Building and 875 North Michigan Avenue, then known as The John Hancock Center.

Alexanderplatz : is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I and is often referred to simply as Alex, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the north-east to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the south-west. It is a popular starting point for tourists, with many attractions including the Fernsehturm (TV tower), the Nikolai Quarter and the Rotes Rathaus (‘Red City Hall’) situated nearby. Alexanderplatz is still one of Berlin’s major commercial areas, housing various shopping malls, department stores and other large retail locations

Potsdamer Platz :

Its a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects

My dear readers may kindly point out any incorrect information in my above writeup needing any corrections! I am truly indebted to Wikipedia for the invaluable information on the subject !Happy Reading !