MUSEUM ISLAND

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Berlin’s national museums are world-class and situated mainly on the remarkably beautiful Museumsinsel (Museum Island). You can spend days wandering from one museum to another. See the Pergamon Museum for classical and ancient art, the recently renovated Bode for sculpture collections and late Antique and Byzantine art and the Alte Nationalgalerie to get your fill of Caspar David Friedrich. If you want to see classic Old Masters, visit the Gemäldegalerie at the Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz. The Hamburger Bahnhof is the place for modern and contemporary works by artists from the second half of the 20th century.

The Neue Nationalgalerie, housed in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s last building, off Potsdamer Platz, has a sensational collection of modern and contemporary art.

At the Martin-Gropius-Bau is an exhibition by Eugène Atget (1857–1927) (through January) celebrating the photographer’s birth 150 years ago.

Need a Bauhaus fix? There’s the Bauhaus Archive, located just south of the Tiergarten. Here, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius’ late masterpiece, a Berlin landmark houses the finest collection of Bauhaus material in changing thematic exhibitions. Helmut Newton Foundation near the Zoologischergarten features work by the late photographer, his wife, June (a.k.a. Alice Springs), and other photographers and artists.

And just outside of Berlin in the quaint Grunewald district is the Brücke Museum celebrating its 40th anniversary as a home for expressionist art.