Museum sights in Berlin
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Alliierten Museum
The original Checkpoint Charlie guard cabin, a Berlin Airlift plane and a reconstructed spy tunnel are among the dramatic exhibits at the Alliierten Museum. Exhibits document the history and challenges faced by the Western Allies during the Cold War.
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Friedrichswerdersche Kirche
This perkily turreted church is a rare neo-Gothic design by Schinkel (1830) and cuts a commanding presence on the Werderscher Markt. The softly lit nave now functions as a museum of 19th-century German sculpture featuring works by such period heavyweights as Johann Gottfried Schadow, Christian Daniel Rauch and Christian Friedrich Tieck. Upstairs is an exhibit on Schinkel’s life and achievements.
The postmodern hulk next to the church is the German Foreign Office.
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Museum der Dinge
With its extensive assemblage of everyday items and objects, the Museum of Things ostensibly traces German design history from the early 20th century to today but actually feels more like a cross between a cabinet of curiosities and a flea market. Alongside detergent boxes and cigarette cases are plenty of bizarre items, like a spherical washing machine, inflation money from 1923 and a swastika-adorned mug.
The collection is based on the archive of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), an association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists formed in 1907 to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass-production techniques. It was an…
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Deutsches Technikmuseum
Fantastic for kids, the Deutsches Technikmuseum is a giant shrine to technology that counts the world's first computer, an entire hall of vintage locomotives and extensive exhibits on aviation and navigation among its top attractions.
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Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
This local history museum mounts as many as 10 changing exhibits annually, highlighting the traditions, buildings and people that shaped this district, women in particular. The biggest crowds turn out for its Easter and Christmas shows.
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Anne Frank Zentrum
This small museum is about a girl that needs no introduction. Who hasn’t read the diary of the German-Jewish girl penned while in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam? Anne Frank didn’t even live to see her 16th birthday, perishing from typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just days earlier. This small but poignant museum uses artefacts and photographs to tell her extraordinary story, with an entire room devoted to her diary and its profound impact on postwar generations. Displays are in German and English.
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Prenzlauer Berg Museum
This little museum presents changing exhibits about various chapters in local history. On the 1st floor of the opposite building is a permanent display about the Jewish school in Rykestrasse.
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Bröhan Museum
This fine museum trains the spotlight on Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism, all decorative styles in vogue between 1889 and 1939 and considered the midwives of modern design. Highlights include fully furnished and decorated period rooms by Hector Guimard and Peter Behrens, a Berlin Secession picture gallery and an entire section dedicated to Henry van de Velde.
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Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt
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Museen Dahlem
Unless some mad scientist invents a magic time-travel-teleporter machine, the Museen Dahlem, which unite three vast collections of art and objects from around the globe, will be your best bet for exploring the world in a single afternoon. The wealth of the engagingly presented exhibits is truly mind-boggling.
There are plenty of highlight in the Museum of Ethnology, including the stunning Africa exhibit, where artfully crafted masks, ornaments, vases, musical instruments and other objects from Benin and Cameroon provide insight into ceremonial aspects of daily life. In another hall you're transported to the South Seas as you wander among outriggers, traditional huts and…
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Schwules Museum
Museum, archive and community centre all in one, the nonprofit Gay Museum is a great place to learn about milestones over the last 200 years of Berlin’s queer history. Temporary exhibits keep things dynamic and often focus on gay icons, artists or historical themes. Enter via the courtyard behind the Melitta Sundström cafe.
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Emil Nolde Museum
Bright flowers, stormy seas and red-lipped women with jaunty hats – the paintings and watercolours of Emil Nolde (1867–1956) are intense, sometimes melancholic and lyrically captivating. Admire a rotating selection of works by this key figure of German expressionism – and member of the artist group Die Brücke (The Bridge) – presented in a brightly converted 19th-century bank building.
Nolde was closely connected with Berlin and spent many winters here with his wife Ada, starting in 1905. Although somewhat sympathetic to the Nazis, the regime deemed him a ‘degenerate artist’ and forbade him from painting. In defiance, he nevertheless secretly produced some 1300…
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Domäne Dahlem
The Domäne Dahlem is an outdoor museum where kids can watch daily farm-life unfold and meet their favourite barnyard animals.
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Museumsdorf Düppel
Museumsdorf Düppel is a recreated medieval village with Sunday craft demonstrations, games and tours.
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Madame Tussauds
No celebrity in town to snare your stare? Don’t fret: at this legendary wax museum Lady Gaga, Obama and Marilyn stand still – very still – for you to snap their picture. Best of all, you’re free to touch all 82 figures, give them a kiss or whatever other silliness you can dream up. Check the website for discounted online tickets.
Sure, it’s an expensive haven of kitsch and camp but where else can you cuddle with Robbie Williams or hug the Pope? There are dozens of German and international stars from politics (Marx, Dalai Lama), culture (Marlene Dietrich), sports (Muhammad Ali, Boris Becker), music (the Beatles, Michael Jackson) and Hollywood (George Clooney,…
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Museumsinsel
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Hanf Museum
One of only four in the world devoted to the subject of hemp, the small Hemp Museum gives hobby botanists a chance to expand their knowledge about this versatile plant by studying its cultural, medicinal and religious significance. There are exhibits about the commercial uses of hemp as well as displays on the discussion about the legalisation of marijuana.
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Pergamonmuseum
An Aladdin’s cave of treasures, the Pergamon opens a fascinating window onto the ancient world and is the one museum in Berlin that should not be missed. Inside the vast complex - custom-built on Museumsinsel in 1930 - awaits a veritable feast of sculpture and monumental architecture from Greece, Rome, Babylon and the Middle East. Most of it was excavated and shipped to Berlin by German archaeologists at the turn of the 20th century. Budget at least two hours for this amazing place and be sure to pick up the free and excellent audioguide. Also note that some sections may be closed while the museum is being renovated and a fourth wing added, all part of Chipperfield’s…
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