Berlin Pergamon

We emerged from the U-Bahn (Underground) near the island where several museums are located. We passed the Cathedral or Dom, built on the site of the original city of Cölln between 17477 and 1750.  The clouds made it an ideal day for a museum visit.

Since forever, it seems, I have wanted to see the Pergamon Museum. It houses collections of Classical Antiquities,

Assyrian relief  1st century BCE

art of the Ancient Near East,

and Islamic art.

The Mshatta facade,  from an unfinished early Islamic desert palace located south of Amman in present-day Jordan.

We arrived there at 10:15 am and, except for lunch, we stayed there until it closed at 8 pm.  It is a fantastic museum.  The first enormous room we entered took my breath away; it was built to hold the Pergamon altar (2^nd century BCE) and the frieze around it.

The frieze in high relief shows scenes of mythical figures engaged in battle; the sequence is extraordinary – one scene moves rapidly into another – almost like a motion picture. 

Today the ancient city of Pergamon is an archeological site in Turkey.

Back in Kreuzberg we stopped at a Thai restaurant for dinner, but we were so tired we could barely eat, but we were hungry and the food was good.