Renovations
Parzinger: “We miss the Pergamon Museum”
Containers with construction rubble are at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin: renovation work is underway. photo
© Sebastian Christoph Gollnow/dpa
As the largest cultural institution in Germany, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has numerous locations. Many houses are in need of renovation. A construction site is particularly painful.
“The museum was until recently the most visited house of the state museums. Although only the south wing was open, we had up to 800,000 visitors a year. That’s enormous,” said Parzinger. “We are looking forward to 2027, when the north wing will reopen, completely redesigned, with the Museum of Islamic Art, then on double the area, and of course with the Pergamon Altar, the main attraction of the Museum Island.”
The foundation, which is supported by the federal and state governments and has around 2,000 employees, includes the state library and several institutes as well as the state museums with 15 collections and 4.7 million objects at 19 locations.
More than a million visitors
The Pergamon Museum is one of the most popular German museums. As one of the few museums in Germany, it attracts more than a million people every year, complete with a collection of antiquities, a Middle Eastern Museum and a Museum of Islamic Art.
The house will remain completely closed for at least four years. The north wing of the building and the central wing with the famous Pergamon Altar have been without public access for ten years.
Construction phase A with the Pergamon Altar should be accessible again in 2027. The second section B will remain closed until at least 2037. This means that the entire Pergamon Museum cannot be explored again for another 14 years at the earliest. The total costs could be 1.5 billion euros.
As an alternative, Parzinger referred to the “Pergamon Interim” with the Pergamon Panorama by Yadegar Asisi. “The small Pergamon frieze, the Telephos frieze, is completely on display there, and large parts of the sculptural furnishings from the Pergamon can also be seen there.”