Alte Nationalgalerie and the Colonnade Courtyard
Why is it significant?
Step into the garden courtyard framed by slender stone colonnades, and look up at a temple raised high on a podium, with twin staircases sweeping up its front. At the top of the stairs, on horseback, rides a bronze king.
Key Facts
| Place | Alte Nationalgalerie and the Colonnade Courtyard |
|---|---|
| Address | Bodestraße 1-3, 10178 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.52070, 13.39880 |
| Part of Walk | Kings, Domes and Empty Shelves: Museum Island & Prussian Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
Step into the garden courtyard framed by slender stone colonnades, and look up at a temple raised high on a podium, with twin staircases sweeping up its front. At the top of the stairs, on horseback, rides a bronze king. That is Frederick William the Fourth, and in a way this whole island was his dream.
He was the most romantic of all the Prussian kings: a gifted draughtsman, in love with the Middle Ages, with Italy and with ideas. In 1841 he decreed that the island behind his palace should become a sanctuary for art and science, and he sketched the temple you are looking at with his own hand. His architect, Friedrich August Stüler, worked it up into plans, and it was built after both of them were gone, from 1867 to 1876.
The king's story ended sadly. After a series of strokes in 1857 he could no longer rule, and his brother Wilhelm took over as regent, later as king and then emperor. Read the inscription over the entrance: it dedicates the building to German art and bears the date 1871, the year the German Empire was proclaimed. A romantic's temple of culture, finished as a monument to a new nation.
The collection began with a gift from a banker, Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, who left some two hundred and sixty paintings to the king in 1861. Inside today hang some of the great treasures of the nineteenth century, including two haunting canvases by Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea and The Abbey in the Oakwood. The royal family bought both in 1810, and the story goes that it was the teenage crown prince, the future Frederick William the Fourth, who begged for them.
So the boy who fell for a lonely monk by a grey sea grew up to build a temple to hang him in. Now leave the courtyard by the south gate, cross the little iron bridge over the canal to the west, and follow the water down to the trees of Unter den Linden.