Lustgarten and Schinkel's Altes Museum
Why is it significant?
Walk up to the foot of the steps and let the eighteen tall Ionic columns line up in front of you like a guard of honour. Behind them is one of the first buildings in Germany designed from scratch to be a public museum: the Altes Museum, the Old Museum, opened in 1830.
Key Facts
| Place | Lustgarten and Schinkel's Altes Museum |
|---|---|
| Address | Am Lustgarten, 10178 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.51930, 13.39860 |
| Part of Walk | Kings, Domes and Empty Shelves: Museum Island & Prussian Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk up to the foot of the steps and let the eighteen tall Ionic columns line up in front of you like a guard of honour. Behind them is one of the first buildings in Germany designed from scratch to be a public museum: the Altes Museum, the Old Museum, opened in 1830.
Its architect was Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the man who more or less designed the face of Prussian Berlin. King Frederick William the Third paid for it, but the idea behind it was radical for a monarchy. The royal collections of ancient sculpture and paintings would no longer be the private pleasure of the court, but something to educate ordinary citizens. Inside, at the centre, Schinkel placed a domed rotunda modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, a temple for art in the heart of a royal capital.
Now turn round and find the huge polished granite bowl standing near the steps. It is nearly seven metres across and was carved from a single glacial boulder found in the hills east of Berlin. It was meant to stand inside the rotunda... but it turned out to be too big for the room, so it has stood outside ever since, the world's most elegant oversized birdbath.
The lawn itself has had many lives. The Lustgarten began as the palace's pleasure garden, where, legend says, some of the first potatoes in Brandenburg were grown. Then the Soldier King, Frederick William the First, who loved nothing more than drilling troops, turned it into a parade ground. In the 1930s the Nazis paved it over for their mass rallies. Only at the end of the 1990s did it become a garden again, with grass, a fountain and people lying in the sun.
So in a single glance you have it all: a dynasty's palace, its cathedral, its museum, and its parade ground turned picnic lawn. Now walk along the western side of the museum, beside the canal, until a modern white colonnade appears on your right.