With the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, one of the most popular German museums has to be completely closed for about four years due to extensive renovation work. This was surprisingly announced by the responsible Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the executive Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning on Monday. With the division into two construction phases, some parts were originally intended to remain accessible during the work. Those plans have now changed. The entire Pergamon Museum will only be open again in 2037.
Section A, which has been closed since 2013, with the north wing and the famous Pergamon altar in the central wing, should be accessible again in 2027. The altar dates from the 2nd century BC. It belonged to the residence of the powerful kings of Pergamon, who created a cultural metropolis in what is now western Turkey, modeled on Athens. The second section B closes on October 23.
Works of art are equipped with sensors
“We have to do justice to a demanding house with our work and make it appropriately future-proof,” says Barbara Große-Rhode from the Federal Office. The complex is “vulnerable”. During the work, the immovable part of the artwork, which weighs several tons, is equipped with sensitive sensors and protected from vibration and moisture.
The house, built between 1910 and 1930, is the dominant part of the Museum Island in the heart of the capital. The ensemble, consisting of five historical buildings, has been classified as a World Heritage Site by Unesco since 1999 because of its special significance.
“As many water damages as years of service”
As one of the few museums in Germany, the Pergamon, which includes the Collection of Antiquities, Museum of the Near East and Museum of Islamic Art, attracts more than a million people every year. In the last year before Corona, there were still 804,000 visitors in 2019, despite closures for construction reasons.
The group of Pergamon Museum, Altes Museum, Bode-Museum, Alter Nationalgalerie, Neues Museum with the famous Nefertiti and the James-Simon-Galerie as the most recent building, located between two arms of the Spree, was visited by almost 3.1 million people before the pandemic.
“I have at least as much water damage as I have years of service,” says Stefan Weber, director of the Museum of Islamic Art since 2009, describing the problems in the old Pergamon walls. The monumental facade of the 8th-century Mshatta Palace is currently being dismantled from his museum and restored in order to be rebuilt in the other wing on a larger scale.
The costs of the project in the listed building are corresponding. The first part cost 489 million euros. 722.4 million euros have been calculated for the second section. Risks and price increases also amount to 295.6 million euros so far. The total costs could end up at 1.5 billion euros.
And that’s only part of it. The Pergamon Museum is part of the master plan for the entire Museum Island ensemble. Planning for the extensive work extends well into – at least – the 2030s. Then an “archaeological promenade” will connect all the houses, largely underground.
