Ever wondered why Berlin doesn't have a Louvre?
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- Recommended for:
- Cultural, Budget, Mid-range, Expensive
...because it has the Kulturforum! Berlin is not exactly famous for it's art galleries. Museum Island is visited by many tourists and for good reason. However, there are also important galleries here.
Berlin is not exactly famous for it's art galleries. It doesn't have a Louvre or National Gallery. Museum Island, featuring the excellent Pergamon Museum, is visited by many tourists and for good reason. The most amazing artefacts are exhibited here, for example the Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon. However, there are important galleries in Berlin, which are not even known to many Germans, let alone Berliners.
One such gallery is the Kulturforum / Gemäldegalerie at Potsdamer Platz.
First of all, it is massive - 7.000 sqm / 53 rooms - a very beautiful space with plenty of natural lighting. From the outside it is a modern building and part of the cultural hotspot around the famous concert hall, home of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle, the Philharmonie.
The Kulturforum boasts one of the most distinguished collections of European paintings from the 13th to 18th century - among them paintings by Dürer, Hohlbein, van Eyck, Bruegel, Giotto, Botticelli, Tizian, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau and Gainsborough. Most of them are not the famous pieces everyone knows from school.
I visited the exhibition with a former arts teacher and realised how amazingly this collection fills in the gaps. One learns so much about the history of art and the work of famous painters by looking at artworks that for one reason or another haven't made it into our cultural conscience. Sometimes this is quite mind-boggling, for example when discovering that Botticelli's famous Venus has a not so famous 'duplicate'.
Next door is the Kupferstichkabinett with etchings by Dürer, Caravaggio and Rubens, to name but a few.
If you love art, you should plan in an entire day for this wonderful gallery.
Kulturforum Berlin:
Stauffenbergstraße 40
10785 Berlin
Tel. +49 (0)30 2662951
Open: Tue-Su 10am-6pm, Thu until 10pm
Tickets: 8 Euros, concessions 4 Euros
<a href="http://www.smb.museum/smb/sammlungen/details.php?lang=en&objectId=5">Website</a>
Another venue for a great day out in Berlin is Hamburger Bahnhof.
The old station building turned gallery is located close to the new Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station). It hosts contemporary art in a very spacious areal of 10.000 sqm. On show are artworks by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Anselm Kiefer as well as Joseph Beuys, some of them on loan from private collections.
In the same building is a Sarah Wiener restaurant for a tasty rest before or after enjoying the exhibition.
Hamburger Bahnhof:
Invalidenstraße 50/51
10557 Berlin
Tel. +49 (0)30 39783439
Open: Tue-Fr 10am-6am, Sa 11am-8pm, Su 11am-6pm
Tickets: 12 Euros, concessions 8 Euros
<a href="http://www.smb.museum/smb/sammlungen/details.php?lang=en&objectId=21&n=1&r=7">Website</a>
Sarah Wiener:
<a href="http://www.sarahwiener.de/html/?show=sarah.wiener">Website</a> (in German)
More information on Ever wondered why Berlin doesn't have a Louvre?:
- Author:
- Corinna
- Traveller type:
- Travel Professional
- Guide rating:
- (1 vote)
- Total views:
- 199
- First uploaded:
- 2 October 2009
- Last updated:
- 1 year 14 weeks 2 days 23 hours 13 min 21 sec ago
- Destinations featured:
- Trip types:
- Cultural
- Budget level:
- Budget, Mid-range, Expensive
- Free tags / Keywords:
- art, galleries, Warhol, gallery, Kulturforum, Hamburger Bahnhof, Dürer, Rubens, Giotto, Botticelli, Tizian, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Lichtenstein, Twombly, Beuys
Community comments (1)
I'm putting this up completely unedited as a test case, to see if site users want a guide like this. In my view, it isn't a travel guide – just two or three tips, without a story to go with them – and its execution is fairly scrappy. Nevertheless, the quality of the tips is great and they could really be of service to art lovers visiting Berlin. So what do we do? I'd prefer to see these recommendations embedded in a longer, written-through piece about unexpected art treasures in Berlin, with much more of a narrative, more of a context. On a presentational level, there must be a crisper, cleaner and more economical way of conveying information about the places you recommend (the addresses, websites, prices etc). Maybe run the information on, rather than have it all on separate lines, so it looks more like an article and less like a telephone directory. As it is, this doesn't do it for me. What do people think?