Bode-Museum

The Baroque Bode Museum, the fourth museum to be built as part of Berlin’s Museum Island on the Spree was completed in 1904. It was designed by court architect Ernst von Ihne under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Intended as a museum for European Renaissance art, it was named after its first director Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) in 1956. Reopening to the public in October 2006, the museum brought together the sculpture and Byzantine art collection.

The museum’s treasures include the sculpture collection with works of art from the middle ages to the 18th century. Of particular interest are the halls devoted to the Italian Renaissance with the glazed terracottas by Luca della Robbia and other masterworks from Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano and works from the German late Gothic school. The Bode museum is best known for its Byzantine art collection and the coin cabinet. There are over 150 paintings to be seen with a particularly strong presence of Roman and Byzantine works from the 3rd to the 15th century A.D. from regions from the Mediterranean basin ranging from Byzantine Constantinople, Greece and the Balkans to north African countries and Russia’s iconographic art.