In the last ten years, Berlin has seen the opening or reopening of around twenty-five museums, including the Gemäldegalerie, the Jewish Museum, and the Film Museum. And, in 2006 the trend has continued as the museum landscape expanded with outstanding new entries. The Bode Museum, formerly the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, will be ceremoniously reopened on October 17, 2006.

The Bode Museum, formerly the Kaiser Friederich Museum, will be reopened with a ceremony on October 17, 2006. After five and a half years of construction work, the Bode Museum is once again shining with its full splendor. The jewel of a building will once again house the Sculpture Collection and the Museum of Byzantine Art, the Numismatic Collection, and works from the Gemäldegalerie. After the reopening of the Old National Gallery in 2001, the second great milestone in the master plan for Museum Island has thus reached completion.

After a lengthy design phase that began as early as the 1870s, the Kaiser Friederich Museum was erected from 1897 to 1904 by the Berlin architect Ernst Eberhard von Ihne. The building was heavily damaged during the Second World War. After gradual restoration between 1948 and 1986, it served for the time being as an exhibition location for several collections. In 1956, it was renamed the Bode Museum after its spiritual creator, Wilhelm von Bode. It is now being reopened in all its brilliance after its complete and thorough restoration.

The Sculpture Collection is among the largest collections in the world of older plastic art. The origins of the collection date back to the Brandenburg-Prussian Kunstkammer, especially to the collecting activities of the Grand Elector (1640-88). Through the acquisition of predominantly Italian sculptures, Gustav Friedrich Waagen and especially Wilhelm von Bode were responsible for an expansion of the inventory. Bode’s goal was to make a comprehensive presentation possible of the history of European sculpture. In the Kaiser Friederich Museum, which was conceived as a Renaissance museum and opened in 1904, the collection, which had grown rapidly, could be presented in a historically new museum framework. The division of Berlin after the Second World War brought with it a division of the sculpture collection. In 2000, after de-cades of separation, the Museum of Byzantine Art and the Sculpture Collection