Museum Island

What makes it special

Eighteen Ionic columns front the Altes Museum. Inside, a wide staircase climbs from the atrium, and the rotunda at its centre, modelled on Rome's Pantheon, is ringed with ancient statues. Its galleries hold the art of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans.

In the Neues Museum, look at the walls as well as the cases. The building was left as a bombed-out shell after the war, and the restoration that reopened it in 2009 kept the scars instead of patching them, so you pass exposed brick, bare blocks and worn corners between the restored rooms.

Nefertiti stands in a glass case in the North Dome Hall of the Neues Museum, on the upper floor. The same museum shows the Berlin Gold Hat and a cube-shaped figure of an Egyptian priest.

The Alte Nationalgalerie is built like a temple raised on a plinth. It holds Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea, Johann Gottfried Schadow's Group of Princesses, Arnold Böcklin's Isle of the Dead and Rodin's Thinker.

At the northern tip of the island, the Bode-Museum's entrance opens into a hall under a great cupola, and a second dome closes the far end of its galleries. It holds the sculpture collection, with Donatello's Madonna Pazzi, the Museum of Byzantine Art and the coin collection.

Visiting

The one Museumsinsel ticket covers every museum for the day, and the permanent collections need no time slot; only some special exhibitions do. Buy it at the ticket desks in the James-Simon-Galerie, then walk through from there into the Neues Museum. Go there first, for Nefertiti.

Come out and walk to the Altes Museum for the rotunda and the antiquities, then on to the Alte Nationalgalerie for the paintings. End the route at the Bode-Museum for the sculpture halls.

If you want longer in one collection, take it and skip the Bode-Museum.

Guided or on your own

The museums lend audio guides and media guides, or offer an app for your smartphone, so you can go round every museum on your own at your own pace.

A group of ten or more must register: book at least two weeks ahead in the museums' online ticket shop, under Groups.

Tips

Before you start, go down to the basement of the James-Simon-Galerie and look at the detailed model of the whole island.

Visitors have found the Bode-Museum quiet compared with the others. Its café looks from the gallery into the dome and onto an equestrian statue.

In the Alte Nationalgalerie, take the stairs to the top floor and work down to the ground floor, so the paintings run in chronological order.

Between museums, sit in the Lustgarten in front of the Altes Museum. In summer the Kolonnaden Bar puts deckchairs out by the Spree, with concerts and DJ sets.