Col GKS Reddy Coins: VISIT BERLIN, GERMANY 25 TO 28 AUG 2018

CHAPPIDI ABHIRATH REDDY,g

C/O COL GKS REDDY,

Secunderabad - 500 087.

Visited Berlin from 25 Aug to 28 Aug 2018 along with my Younger Daughter and family. Took off from Stansted Airport, London at 0800h on 25 Aug and landed in Berlin at about 1000h. And returned to Stansted on 28 Aug (AN).

Germany

Germany (German: Deutschland German pronunciation: [ˈdɔʏtʃlant]), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland,

listen (help·info)), is a country in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres (137,988 sq mi), and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With nearly 83 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany's capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Dortmund and Essen. The country's other major cities are Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Bremen, Dresden, Hannover, and Nuremberg.

Berlin

Berlin (/bɜːrˈlɪn/; German pronunciation: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn]) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,711,930 (2017) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states, and it is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, the capital of which, Potsdam, is contiguous with Berlin. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which is, with 6,004,857 (2015) inhabitants, Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.

Berlin straddles the banks of the River Spree, which flows into the River Havel (a tributary of the River Elbe) in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs, formed by the Spree, Havel, and Dahme rivers, the largest of which is Lake Müggelsee. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes. The city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects.

26 Aug 2018.

The next day on 26 Aug we visited the Museum Island and the Humboldt University. However, we could not visit all the Museums in the Island due to paucity of time, though we covered most of the important Museums.

Museum Island, Berlin

Museum Island (German: Museumsinsel) is the name of the northern half of an island in the Spree river in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, the site of the old city of Cölln. It is so-called for the complex of internationally significant museums, all part of the Berlin State Museums, that occupy the island's northern part:

1. The Altes Museum (Old Museum) named as the Königliches Museum when it was built on August 3, 1830, until it was renamed in 1841. The museum was completed on the orders of Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

2. The Neues Museum (New Museum) finished in 1859 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, a student of Schinkel. Destroyed in World War II, it was rebuilt under the direction of David Chipperfield for the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and re-opened in 2009.

3. The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) completed in 1876, also according to designs by Friedrich August Stüler, to host a collection of 19th-century art donated by banker Joachim H. W. Wagener

4. The Bode Museum on the island's northern tip, opened in 1904 and then called Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. It exhibits the sculpture collections and late Antique and Byzantine art.

5. The Pergamon Museum, constructed in 1930. It contains multiple reconstructed immense and historically significant buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon.

6. The Humboldt Forum will open in 2019 in the Berlin Palace opposite the Lustgarten park, and will incorporate the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Museum of Asian Art; both are successor institutions of the Ancient Prussian Art Chamber, which was also located in the Berlin Palace and which was established in the mid 16th century.

In 1999, the museum complex was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

The Altes Museum

The Altes Museum (German for Old Museum) is a museum building on Museum Island in Berlin, Germany. Since restoration work in 2010–11, it houses the Antikensammlung (antiquities collection) of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building was built between 1823 and 1830 by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the neoclassical style to house the Prussian royal family's art collection. The historic, protected building counts among the most distinguished in neoclassicism and is a high point of Schinkel's career. Until 1845, it was called the Königliches Museum (Royal Museum). Along with the other museums and historic buildings on Museum Island, the Altes Museum was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

A view of Altes Museum

Another View of Altes Museum

The Neues Museum

The Neues Museum ("New Museum") is a museum in Berlin, Germany, located to the north of the Altes Museum (Old Museum) on Museum Island.

It was built between 1843 and 1855 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler, a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The museum was closed at the beginning of World War II in 1939,^[1] and was heavily damaged during the bombing of Berlin. The rebuilding was overseen by the English architect David Chipperfield. The museum officially reopened in October 2009^[2] and received a 2010 RIBA European Award^[3] and the 2011 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

Exhibits include the Egyptian and Prehistory and Early History collections, as it did before the war. The artifacts it houses include the iconic bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.^[2]

Both as a part of the Museum Island complex and as an individual building, the museum testifies to the neoclassical architecture of museums in the 19th century. With its new industrialized building procedures and its use of iron construction, the museum plays an important role in the history of technology. Since the classical and ornate interiors of the Glyptothek and of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich were destroyed in World War II, the partly destroyed interior of the Neues Museum ranks among the last remaining examples of interior museum layout of this period in Germany.

A view of the Neues Museum Berlin

Another view of the Neues Museum

Courtyard in Front of Neues Museum

Another view of the Courtyard

Decorated Covered passage Leading to the Neues Museum

The Bridge Across River Spree Connecting the Museum Island with Mainland

Another View of the Bridge with Dom Cathedral in the Background

The Bode Museum

The Bode Museum is one of the group of museums on the Museum Island in Berlin, Germany. It was designed by architect Ernst von Ihne and completed in 1904. Originally called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after Emperor Frederick III, the museum was renamed in honour of its first curator, Wilhelm von Bode, in 1956.

Closed for repairs since 1997, the museum was reopened on October 18, 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.

A side view of Bode Museum

A closeup view of the Museum from the Bridge Right in Front of the Museum

A view of River Spree from the Bridge in Front of Bode Museum

A close view of the Entrance to Bode Museum

The Entrance to Bode Museum

Berlin Cathedral

Berlin Cathedral (German: Berliner Dom) is the short name for the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church (German: Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin) in Berlin, Germany. It is located on Museum Island in the Mitte borough. The current building was finished in 1905 and is a major work of Historicist architecture of the "Kaiserzeit".

The Dom is the parish church of the congregation Gemeinde der Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin, a member of the umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The Berlin Cathedral has never been a cathedral in the actual sense of that term since it has never been the seat of a bishop. The bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg (under this name 1945–2003) is based at St. Mary's Church and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.