The Museum Island in Berlin is not a “billion grave”

It caused a sensation when German archaeologists excavated the Pergamon Altar in Turkey at the end of the 19th century. Experts flocked to Berlin for the exhibition of his giant frieze on Museum Island in 1880, including the great Basel art historian Jacob Burckhardt. Of the "terribly glorious Evenement" he wrote to a friend: "All gods 8 feet high fighting with giants... a bite, hew, smite, crush, with the aid of mighty dogs and lions, while the serpent ends of many giants turn to heads again form and bite the gods in the back and calves ... all full of the most furious vehemence and in the greatest style."

Ever since Jacob Burckhardt, these monumental Hellenistic sculptures have delighted generations of art lovers. They make the Pergamon Museum the most visited museum in Berlin. But the world-class exhibits will not be on display for four years from October, as the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has just announced. The colossus of the Pergamon Museum from 1930, the largest building on the Museum Island, is so dilapidated that it is no longer possible to partially close it, as was previously the case, but to close it completely.

Wailing about this only increased when the foundation announced that the rehabilitation will take longer and that the cost would rise to 1.2 billion euros. That seems to be a kind of natural law with such large-scale projects – and not just in the capital. Think of Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, for example. The renovation of the opera houses in Stuttgart and Cologne is to cost one billion euros each, the same amount is estimated for the renovation of the concrete monster of the Ruhr University Bochum.

In view of the criticism of the "billionaire's grave" on Museum Island, one must remember how much has already been achieved in the conversion of this world heritage site. When the Wall fell in 1989, none of the five houses in what was then East Berlin were up to date. In 1993, a "Museum Island master plan" was announced, which not only envisaged the renovation and modernization of the buildings, but also the construction of a new central entrance building and the connection of all houses by an archaeological promenade in the basement floors.

Today, thirty years later, this once-in-a-century project is a good halfway down the road – with consistently convincing results. The Old National Gallery was the first to be completed in 2001, followed by the Bode Museum (both were closed for years). The New Museum was added in 2009, and the new-classic entrance building in 2019. Two years later, the Humboldt Forum opened behind the reconstructed palace facades, adding the non-European collections of the Prussian Foundation to the Museum Island.

When the last halls of the Pergamon Museum reopen in 2037 - or a little later - the Museum Island, this globally unique ensemble of seven outstanding buildings and masterpieces of world art, will delight more people than ever.