Top Berlin museums

It’s nearly three decades since the Berlin Wall came down, and much of its course is marked by a double row of cobblestones, with information panels at key points, it’s like an outdoor museum. There are also several stretches preserved as memorials to those who died trying to cross it. Immediately east of Potsdamer Platz, a sizeable, crumbling section of Wall runs along Niederkirchnerstraße, beside the captivating Topography of Terror, an exhibition on the former site of the Gestapo and SS headquarters which documents their chilling histories. To the east, Niederkirchnerstraße meets Friedrichstraße at the site of the Wall’s most infamous crossing, Checkpoint Charlie. Here, along with a reconstruction of the US checkpoint booth, is a fascinating open-air display on the Wall’s history. The most rewarding section of Wall can be seen at Bernauer Strasse, just north of Mitte, where a short stretch has been preserved as the Berlin Wall Memorial.

Daniel Libeskind’s striking zinc-skinned Jewish Museum (Jüdisches Museum), is part museum, part memorial. Its lower ground level is Libeskind’s reflection on three strands of the Jewish experience in Berlin - exile, Holocaust and continuity - and is a disorientating but compelling experience. On the upper two floors, a more conventional exhibition documents the culture, achievements and history of Berlin’s Jewish community.

Just west of Potsdamer Platz lies the Kulturforum, a gathering of museums centred on the unmissable Gemäldegalerie, with its world-class collection of old masters. The inter-connected building to the north houses the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts), a sparkling collection of European arts and crafts. Art museums in Berlin don’t get much better than this.

lf you’re looking for art, Berlin is just the place for you. The Alte Nationalgalerie houses a collection of nineteenth-century European art, while at the island’s northern tip the beautifully restored Bode-Museum displays Byzantine art and medieval to eighteenth-century sculpture.

After seeing the Berliner Dom, the city’s grandest church, take a look in the area at the fantastic museums on offer. The Altes Museum focuses on Greek and Roman antiquities, while the Neues Museum houses the city’s impressive Egyptian collection with Berlin’s single most famous exhibit - a 3,300-year-old bust of Nefertiti.

The excellent Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum) covers two thousand years of German history. It presents everything in imaginative displays that often focus on social history, making good use of the vast selection of artefacts in the collection: from a seventeenth-century Turkish tent taken during the siege of Vienna, to parallel displays of life in 1950s East and West Berlin. This is one of the best museums in Berlin, for sure.