Bode Museum

The magnificent Bode Museum makes up the northern tip of Museum Island. The building, designed by Ernst von Ihne, houses a collection of sacred art from Byzantium as well as European sculptures from the Renaissance to the Baroque.

The Bode Museum, formerly called the Emperor Frederick Museum (Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum), is a listed building on Museum Island. It was built from 1898 to 1904 by order of German Emperor William II according to plans by Ernst von Ihne in Baroque Revival style. Originally named Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after Emperor Frederick III, the museum was renamed in honor of its first curator, Wilhelm von Bode, in 1956.

Closed for repairs since 1997, the museum was reopened on 18 October 2006, after a €156 million refurbishment. True to the ethos of its founding director, Wilhelm von Bode, who believed in mixing art collections, it is now the home for a collection of sculptures, Byzantine art, and coins and medals.

The presentation of the collections is both geographic and chronological, with the Byzantine and Gothic art of northern and southern Europe displayed separately on the museum’s first floor and a similar regional division of Renaissance and Baroque art on its second floor. Around 150 paintings from the Gemäldegalerie are also presented alongside the permanent collections.