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Posts tagged ‘Museumsinsel’

Berlin U5-Museumsinsel: Mozart, Schinkel, & Dudler

Above: Museumsinsel U-Bahn station entry-exit ‘A’. Photo, 17 May 2025 (P15).

The Berlin U-Bahn metro station Museumsinsel adjacent to the world renowned Museum Island is located on the U5 line which connects the city’s central station (Hauptbahnhof) with Alexanderplatz and the city’s eastern neighbourhoods. Construction for the station began in 2012 and lasted over 8 years. For the station interior at track level, architect Max Dudler was inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1815–1816 design of the stage for the Mozart opera “Die Sauberflöte” (The Magic Flute). For the appearance of the Queen of the Night, Schinkel imagined a large dome-like space like the overhead starry night sky. Over each of the two tracks in the U-Bahn station, Dudler designed a dark blue barrel-shaped vault embedded with thousands of white point-sources of light.

The fully-completed U5 extension from Hauptbahnhof to Alexanderplatz opened to the public on 4 December 2020, which at long last connected the Hauptbahnhof with Berlin’s U-Bahn city transport system. The Museumsinsel station on the U5 line opened on 9 July 2021. In addition to the city’s bus network, the station now allowed visitors to use the U-Bahn metro to reach the Museum Island complex, inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 1999.

Artist and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) has his “fingerprints” on many of the city’s early- to middle 19th-century architecture, including in the immediate vicinity of the station the Neue Wache (New Guard House), Schlossbrücke (Castle Bridge), Friedrichswerder Church, Bauakademie (Building Academy), and the Altes Museum (Old Museum).

( Click here for images )

25T25 Museum Island: 200 years on World Heritage Day

E24, B19.

The international UNESCO body recognized the importance of Berlin’s Museumsinsel or Museum Island by inscribing the site onto the list of World Heritage (WH) Sites in 1999.

I wrote here:

The Berlin Museumsinsel is an island consisting of five museums built between 1824 and 1930: Alte Nationalgalerie, Altes Museum, Bode-Museum, Neues Museum, and Pergamonmuseum. These museums represent individual artistic and historical significance, the continuing development of what museums should mean to society, and the achievement of a grand central civic project.

To coincide with Germany’s annual World Heritage Day on the 1st Sunday in June, the entire Museum Island celebrates its 200th anniversary with a weekend festival. I’ve chosen to visit the Altes Museum (Old Museum) and the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery).

Altes Museum

Altes Museum: construction 1823-1830, to designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Berlin’s oldest museum now specializes in Greek and Roman antiquities.
Natural light through the cupola in the rotunda illuminates Roman statue-copies of deities from Greek mythology.
Hera (Juno), queen goddess.
Hygeia (Salus), goddess of health.
Nike (Victoria), goddess of victory.
Tyche (Fortuna), goddess of chance.
Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love.
Demeter (Ceres), goddess of agriculture.
Artemis (Diana). goddess of wild animals and the hunt; however, she’s missing a bow and arrows.

Alte Nationalgalerie

Alte Nationalgalerie, constructed 1866-1876 from designs by F. Stüler & J. Strack; now houses paintings and sculptures mostly from the 19th-century, including important works by C.D. Friedrich and K.F. Schinkel.
“Gothic Cathedral on the water”, by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1813.
“Castle by the water,” by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1820.
“Rock arch”, by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1818).
“Deep in the forest by moonlight”, Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1830.
“Greifswald Harbour”, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818-1820.
“Moonrise over the sea”, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1822.
“Woman at a Window”, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1822.

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 1 June 2025. I did not receive any request or compensation for the content here. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.