Tuesday, June 21

The Pergamon Museum

I've been living in Vienna for almost 10 months now and I feel like I've spent more time in museums than I ever thought possible. This is a museum that I had never heard of before just a few weeks ago, but is one of the coolest museums I've ever been in and would emphatically encourage anyone to go to if they are visiting Berlin.

The Pergamon Museum is a collection of enormous ancient structures that the Germans literally took apart, brought to Berlin, and assembled in this museum piece by piece. They not only took (I think of it more as...well... stealing, really) the Pergamon Altar, after which the museum is named, but also the door from a fortress entrance gate, and an entire marketplace front. It's unbelievable. I'm also always amazed to see the beautiful structures that were created long before our plethora of fine building tools and techniques.
The Market Door from Milatus from 120 A.D
The Babalonian Ishtar Gate
What's also a perk: since the ancient structures are so huge, there's not many things to have to check out in this museum. This is great, because museums are exhausting.

peace.

-lab

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9 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 21, 2011 at 7:38 PM

    That is sick I've seen picks of that gate in a few different art history books.
    -jv

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  2. AnonymousJune 22, 2011 at 4:29 PM

    I didn't spend nearly enough time in Vienna when I visited a few years ago but would have loved to see this museum. If you have time to travel around Austria you should definitely spend a few days in Salzburg and Halstaat (gorgeous and cute salt mining town)....if you haven't already.

    -KZ

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  3. Ed ZacheryJune 22, 2011 at 8:11 PM

    Don't know how I feel about the German's stealing those buildings, on the one hand: that's messed up; on the other: at least they were restored and preserved for us to enjoy today!

    Vienna is sweet, and definitely does have a ton of great museums. I also loved watching the opera on the giant video screen that they use to show it live in the streets outside of the operahouse.

    -DMc

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  4. AnonymousJune 22, 2011 at 9:29 PM

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  5. Ed ZacheryJune 22, 2011 at 9:32 PM

    Everyone steals monuments and artwork! France, Italy, England, the Met in NY. I'm surprised Cairo and Athens have anything left.

    -KZ

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  6. LucyJune 23, 2011 at 2:42 PM

    I went to Salzburg and Halstatt the first time I visited Austria, so pretty!! This year I spent a lot of weekends in the other more northern regions of the country and the Wachau, the wine district of Austria, west of Vienna.
    The live screen by the opera is great, but I'm still amazed that you can get standing room tickets to the opera for 2 euros. I've stood in every possible place in the opera, and the middle of the tippety top balcony has the most amazing acoustics.
    -lab

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  7. IzzyJune 24, 2011 at 10:30 AM

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  8. IzzyJune 24, 2011 at 10:37 AM

    that market door from milatus looks very very similar to the reconstructed ruins in ephesus, turkey (very close to milatus) i saw last month on my med. cruise. ephesus is totally amazing, the entire ancient city is pretty much reconstructed and somewhat intact. relatively little of it was stolen by europeans because it was buried for so long.

    anyways what im sayin is that in ephesus at least, you can still see ruins rebuilt where they formally stood. and its so cool.

    ... and after checking wikipedia turns out that the stuff that WAS taken away is predominately housed in the ephesos museum in vienna. that city is chock full of museums!

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  9. LucyJune 25, 2011 at 11:45 AM

    SHIT. i haven't been to the ephesus museum here, and it's one of the ones i have a year pass to! doing that tomorrow.....

    also, just to clarify, the pergamon museum was in berlin, not vienna. but germanic peoples in general seem to like taking old stuff and preserving it :)

    izzy, i want to see pictures of your trip to ephesus when i'm home please, it sounds amazing!!

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