Berlin lives, breathes and eats art: with its finger on the pulse of the times, Berlin is home to an emergent vital, new art scene. A Mecca for contemporary art, Berlin attracts creative young people from around the globe. The reconstruction of the Hamburger Bahnhof transformed a large industrial building into a temple of contemporary art. At the same time, a new and internationally renowned gallery scene is booming in the districts of Berlin Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. Berlin's annual art trade fair, art forum berlin, has made the city a melting pot of the international art market and a seismograph for contemporary art trends.

Berlin is once again the city where trends are put in motion. But it is also a city of history, shaped by creativity, turmoil and tradition. History has etched itself upon Berlin, the city's creative muses have smoothed the edges.

Prussian architects gave Berlin its first distinguishable face. Kings and princes with a predilection for the arts cultivated domestic culture, helping to make Berlin the capital of European arts during the Weimar Republic. War, destruction and the pulse of new life continue to shape the Berlin of today, which is again fast becoming one of Europe's art capitals. The city's museums display not only the traces of history, but some of the world's most treasured artefacts: a unique variety and density of art, a true encyclopaedic compendium of history and world art from all epochs.

Berlin's museums house world cultural treasure such as the Pergamon Altar and Berlin's most beautiful woman, Nefertiti, masters from Giotto to Caravaggio, from Breughel to Caspar David Friedrich, from Joseph Beuys to the "young wild ones" like Baselitz, Haring and others. The museums function also as the city's memory: they document the dynamic history of a city torn apart, from the grandeur of old Prussia to Raisin Bombers.

Berlin is a city of museums. Over 170 museums house history, art and knowledge, creating a unique museum landscape. It is a dynamic one that continues to grow at a breathtaking tempo.

In the nineties, the sensational openings for the Berggruen Collection at Stülerbau at Charlottenburg Palace with its "Picasso and his Era" exhibit and the new Museum of Contemporary Art at the Hamburger Bahnhof put Berlin on the map as an international art metropolis. June of 1998 saw the opening of one of the world's largest and most important museums of old masters with the highly-praised new home for the Picture Gallery at the Cultural Forum in the Tiergarten. The new film museum at Potsdamer Platz quickly proved itself a major public attraction. This is where articles of Marlene Dietrich's estate have been made part of a permanent exhibit.

In September of 2001, Europe's largest Jewish museum opened. Daniel Libeskind's spectacular new building on Lindenstraße was a hit even before the permanent exhibit opened. The building's unique architectural design of a burst Star of David and the highly praised permanent exhibition have drawn over one million visitors in the museum's second year.

The world-famous Museum Island lies between the Spree river and the Kupfergraben, its buildings housing archaeological collections and 19th century art. The five-building complex's starting point was the Old Museum, a Schinkel construct completed in 1830. King Friedrich Wilhelm III opened up royal art treasures to the public for the first time here, the oldest of Berlin's museums. This ensemble of museums was to become, according to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, a "sanctuary of art and science". Schinkel's student, Friedrich August Stüler, designed the first development plans in 1841 for the Museum Island. Both the New Museum and the Old National Gallery were completed in 1859 and 1876 respectively, according to his plans. In 1904 the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (today the Bode Museum) was opened. With the opening of the Pergamon Museum in 1930, building on the Museum Island was, for the time being, completed.

Nearly seventy percent of the buildings were destroyed in the Second World War and continue to bear the wounds of these damages today. In 1999, the Berlin State-Owned Museums - Prussian Cultural Heritage decided upon a master plan for the Museum Island which included renovation plans and plans to reunite and reorganize collections that had been divided up after the war, making the Museum Island Europe's largest cultural investment project.

The Old National Gallery opened its gates on December 2, 2001 with a new presentation of its collection, dedicated entirely to 19th century art. This impressive building, boasting its restored architectural beauty, is the showpiece of the Museum Island's ensemble. The re-opening of the Old National Gallery was also the first completed step of the long-term plans for the Museum Island. The re-opening of the Bode Museum in 2006 will be the next important step towards completion of the project. Plans to be completed include rebuilding the remaining buildings and the construction of a glass-covered central entrance as well as an underground connection route. To be entered on UNESCO's World Heritage list, the world's only Museum Island will shine once again in its grandeur. The extension and development of the Museum Island will create long-term benefits for Berlin as an art and museum location. Indeed, its completion in the next decade will provide, in the middle of Berlin, a truly unique ensemble of museums, with a cultural historical panorama of 6,000 years of human history.

The city's cultural resources have grown enormously in recent years, and will continue to do so in the future. Three new museums opened in 2002: the Heinrich-Zille-Museum in the Nikolaiviertel, the Max-Liebermann-Villa in Wannsee and the Mies van der Rohe-Villa in Berlin Hohenschönhausen. Extensions to the Berlin Armory in the German Historical Museum have begun on May 25, 2003. Designed by star architect loeh Ming Pei, the elegant building spectacularly links baroque with modern 20th century architecture. In 2006, the armory will be re-opened, following a complete renovation, and the German Historical Museum's collections will once again be open to the public for the long-term. An attraction in itself will be the Schlüter courtyard, which Pei plans to cover with a glass filigree roof, providing a great event location. On 14 December 2003, the German Technical Museum also opened up a new large extension space in which exhibitions on boat travel are on display. Once completed, the extension will provide over 50,000 square meters of exhibition space, making it one of the world's largest technical museums.

Berlin's attractiveness for the international art world is unflagging. This is demonstrated by the most recent developments: three of the most important international collectors are to permanently move their treasures - world-renowned collections - to Berlin. Now that the Hamburger Bahnhof is home to outstanding private collections of contemporary art, the Marx Collection and the Marzona Collection which make up the core, another private collection is to take up permanent residence nearby. The Flick Collection with outstanding works of classical modernism and contemporary art. But that's not all. The most well-known representative of art photography, Helmut Newton, recently announced that he is to move his entire collection to Berlin this year. It will be permanently housed in the splendid, classicistic building at Bahnhof Zoo which was formerly home to the art library.

Even the art capital New York has been unable to withstand this pull and is to stage a sensational exhibition in Berlin this year. The US metropolis has sent one of the best-guarded art collections in the world for almost half a year exclusively to Berlin. 200 selected masterpieces from the Museum of Modern Art, lovingly called MoMA, were on display in a unique exhibition entitled "MoMA in Berlin" from mid February for more than six months in the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum. This was a great stroke of luck which has to do not only with the renovation work in MoMa but also with the ongoing appeal of the art metropolis Berlin.

Berlin's museum landscape has undergone rapid change in recent years, as is illustrated by the fact that in the near future a total of 27 new or completely renovated museums will have been opened.

The Berlin Tourist Information is looking forward to your visit!

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