Ancient history

The Altes Museum is housed in a Neoclassical building that evokes echoes of the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome with its colonnaded frontage, complete with 18 monumental columns and openplan atrium and rotunda lined with sculptures from antiquity.

The main floor is home to a thousand years of ancient Greek art, from everyday objects such as pottery and coins to exquisite gold jewellery and marble statues. The upper floor concentrates on Etruscan and Roman art including house-shaped funerary urns and busts of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

North of the Altes Museum is the Neues Museum (New Museum), completed in 1859, which contains a wealth of art and artefacts from ancient Egypt. Its centrepiece is a bust of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti. It also has an extensive collection of items from the Stone Age.