With its fifteen separate collections, three research institutes and replica workshop, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, or National Museums in Berlin, constitutes a universal museum whose scope ranges from the very dawn of world art and culture to the present day. Born from Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussias Royal Museum, the National Museums presents its many treasures at various separate locations in Berlin:

The Museum Island represents 100 years of museum architecture, right at the heart of Berlin. Huge attractions for the public are the Pergamon Altar in the Pergamonmuseum (Germanys most visited museum, with over one million guests each year), as well as the Neues Museum and its world famous bust of Nefertiti. The Museum Islands significance as a place of cultural heritage was formally reflected in its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. Since then, renovation work has begun on all five buildings as part of the Museum Island Master Plan. A key feature of this plan is the joining together of the various buildings by the Archaeological Promenade and the erection of a central entrance building.

Meanwhile, Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz, completed in 1998, has evolved into a modern counterpart to the Museum Island, containing museums, the state library and philharmonic hall. On display here is the art and culture of the European modern age. The world famous Gem?ldegalerie presents the history of European painting in all its facets, from the Middle Ages up to 1800. The New National Gallery, Mies van der Rohes temple of light and glass, unites under one roof outstanding works of modern art up to the 1970s.

The Dahlem Museums in the citys west, open up the diversity of non-European civilizations and the different ethnological traditions of the five continents. In future, the National Museums Museum of Asian Art and Ethnological Museum will enter into an exciting dialogue with the Humboldt-Universit?t and the Central and Regional Library Berlin, as they share the Humboldt Forum, to be housed in the reconstructed Berlin Palace. The completion of the Humboldt Forum will see a site dedicated to the cultures of the world arise in the heart of Berlin, directly opposite the Museum Island.

Further institutions belonging to the National Museums in Berlin are the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlins contemporary art museum), Museum Berggruen and the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg (containing Surrealist works and works by Picasso and his contemporaries), the Museum of Photography, as well as the Museum of Decorative Arts in the K?penick Palace in the east.