a blog by Peter Leonard
After the opening ceremony, a subset of us set off for the Museum Island in the middle of Berlin, for a late-night tour of the Neues Museum.
As that Wikipedia article will tell you — and as the photo above suggests — the Neues Museum has lain in ruins since February 1945, destroyed by an Allied bombing raid and never rebuilt. Other than a few halting efforts in the 1980s, the present reconstruction is the first effort to clear out the rubble, restore the damaged spaces, and rebuild those that were totally destroyed. Thus the entire area is somewhat of a construction zone right now.
Nevertheless, we somehow got a guided tour of the interior of the museum, given by a gentleman who serves as the press liaison for the entire Museuminsel organization. The tour took place in rapid-fire German, with a combination of Swedish cognates and a kind-hearted American from Texas (who took pity on me and provided real-time translation) enabling me to grasp most of what was said.
In the Neues Museum, most of what was indeed said consisted of sharp warnings to avoid plunging into pits of rubble and/or iron bars protruding from crumbing brick walls. Some of the rooms are well on their way towards complete restoration, with redone plasterwork and painting:
Others are in reasonably good condition despite being abandoned for 50 years:
While still others are a bit worse for the wear:
Our guide pointed out some of the interesting traces of innovative construction techniques that the building’s derelict condition has made evident: Here, the bricked-up entrance that once let an entire steam engine railroad transport masonry materials throughout the site, during the museum’s construction in the 1840s:
(You can read more about the use of steam engines in the construction process in the Wikipedia article linked above.) The wall shown here is part of the grand entrance hall and staircase, which is being restored with new marble:
The complete set of pictures from the museum are on Flickr here.