Berlin’s world-famous museum of antiquities, the Pergamon Museum, will close later this month for a renovation and restoration that will stretch out until 2037.
The 14-year shutdown will allow repair of damage due to the museum’s foundations being on a shifting riverbed and to the weight of its collections, which include huge monuments including the Ishtar Gate and the Pergamon Altar, artefacts of ancient Near East civilizations.
The museum opened in 1930, built to house those and other exhibits of ancient art and architecture acquired late in the 18th century, a period when a great deal of archaeological work was being done.
