Bode Museum
Sculptures, Byzantine art, and ancient coins share one Baroque Revival building — by design, not accident.
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The founding director Wilhelm von Bode believed collections should be mixed, so you move from Coptic carvings through medieval Gothic to Renaissance sculptures in one lap. The building has scars too: portions of the collection were stashed in a wartime antiaircraft tower, and fires in May 1945 left more than 400 paintings and about 300 sculptures missing — lost to looting or destroyed outright. What survived a €156 million restoration reopened in 2006.
What to look for
- The Flora — Bode attributed this controversial sculpture to Leonardo da Vinci, a claim now widely disputed.
- First-floor galleries where northern and southern European Byzantine and Gothic art are deliberately split into separate regional sections.
- The Münzkabinett (coins and medals collection), sharing the building with sculpture and Byzantine art as Bode intended.
Part of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Museum Island complex; the museum reopened October 2006 after nearly a decade of closure for refurbishment.
Bode Museum is one of 37 sights worth the detour in Berlin, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Berlin pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Berlin
- Berlin WallBuilt to keep citizens in, not enemies out — and the death strip of anti-vehicle trenches and beds of nails makes that intent impossible to misread.
- Brandenburg GateFor 28 years a wall sealed it shut — now you walk straight through.
- ReichstagA fire in 1933, a battle in 1945, a dome in 1999 — you walk inside Germany's working parliament.
- Berlin Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion)Designed for the 1936 Olympics and still hosting European finals — the bowl has barely left the world stage.
- Pergamon MuseumThe Pergamon Altar and the collections of the Vorderasiatisches Museum once filled this hall — closed since 2023, with the North Wing returning in 2027.
- Fernsehturm BerlinA 368-metre Cold War statement that outlived the government that built it — and now stands for the city that absorbed it.