Humboldt Forum

The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It is named in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. Considered the “German equivalent” of the British Museum, the Humboldt Forum houses the non-European collections of the Berlin State Museums, temporary exhibitions and public events.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it opened digitally on 16 December 2020 and became accessible to the general public on 20 July 2021. On 16 September 2022, the opening of the eastern wing, the last section of the Humboldt Forum museum, meant the Humboldt Forum was finally opened to the public. It became Germany’s most expensive cultural project to date, with overall costs totaling $700 million by 2019.

The Humboldt Forum unites various cultural and scientific institutions under one roof: the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of Asian Art, the Berlin Exhibition and the Humboldt Lab of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Spread over more than 17,000 square meters on the second and third floors, the museums present objects from their archaeological, ethnological and art-historical collections together with an extensive array of photographs, films and sound recordings.

The museum occupies the reconstructed Berlin Palace, where the Ancient Prussian Art Chamber was originally established by Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg in the mid 16th century. This historic site has witnessed centuries of transformation, from royal residence to communist parliament building (Palace of the Republic), and now to this modern cultural institution.

At a height of 30 meters, the roof terrace offers views of the Berlin Cathedral and Museum Island to the north, the Rotes Rathaus and the Fernsehturm to the east, the Neuer Marstall and the State Council Building to the south and the boulevard Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate to the west.