History museums in Berlin

What used to be the headquarters of the Gestapo until 1945 is now an architectural complex which holds the evidence of Nazi crimes. There are three permanent exhibitions in Topography of Terror that you can explore and a number of temporary ones. All information is provided both in German and Englis

The Pergamon Museum in Berlin is one of the largest museums in Germany. The museum showcases some of the world's most important collections of historical artifacts and art. The museum's collections are divided into three main thematic sections. The most iconic one is the Antiquity Collection, which

After being severely damaged during the war, this Neues Museum (re)opened its doors to the public in 2009. It now shows huge collections of Egyptian art, prehistoric objects, and classical antiquities. One of the highlights of the museum is the bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. The Neues Museum

Opened in 2001, the Jewish Museum in Berlin ranks among the largest ones of its kind in Europe. Visitors can learn more about the history of German Jews from medieval settlements to the modern age and experience the history of Germany from the perspective of the Jewish minority. The museum consists

Opened in 1987, as part of the celebration of 750 years since the founding of Berlin, the German Historical Museum follows the long history of the German nation, as well as that of entire Europe. The museum is located in two main buildings, one modernist, other Baroque, which were erected some 250 y

The Palace of Tears (Tränenpalast) is the former train station and a crossing place between East and West Germany. Citizens from the west part of the country were allowed to travel and this was the place where they said their goodbyes to their friends and family in the east. After the fall of the Be

Köpenick Palace is a unique baroque palace that is surrounded by water. It was built by the Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg and is located on an island in the Dahme river. This location adds to the charm and beauty of the palace, making it a picturesque spot for visitors.

The DDR Museum is an authentic and interactive museum devoted to the daily life in former East Germany (DDR). It is divided into three main areas: Public Life, State and Ideology, and Life in a Tower Block. You can see a typical DDR living room, try on usual DDR clothes, use an original typewriter o

Reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple and a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, the Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie) in Berlin houses a huge collection of art of various styles and movements. The collection contains works of the Neoclassical and Romantic movements (by artists such as

Dedicated to East Germany's secret police and housed in its former headquarters, the Stasi Museum in Berlin will inform you about state surveillance. The collection of the museum includes spy equipment and visitors can explore unchanged offices, and learn about the establishment of the Ministry of S

Despite its romantic setting by the lake, the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz has witnessed a dreadful part of German history. The so-called "Final Solution", the deportation and mass murder of European Jews, was put into motion in this villa in 1942. As a reminder of these horrible acts, it has been tur

The Samurai Museum Berlin is a unique institution that houses a private collection of artifacts and art objects related to the Japanese warrior class. This collection belongs to Peter Janssen, a construction entrepreneur. The museum offers a rare opportunity to explore the rich history and culture of the Samurai, making it a fascinating destination for those interested in Japanese history and culture.

Operating since 1999, the interactive museum Story of Berlin presents the history of Berlin. Learn how people lived in different eras of the city's history. You can also take a guided tour through a nuclear bomb shelter from the Cold War. The museum is located inside the Kudamm Karree shopping mall.

The immersive history experience! Travel through 2000 years of German history: sneak round a castle, operate Gutenberg’s printing press, dance in the roaring 20s and see the ruins of Berlin after WW2. Finish in the 1990s on a Berlin S-Bahn. THEA Award Winner 2024

Museum Berggruen in Berlin is a museum with a collection of modern art classics, called the Berggruen collection, named after the art collector Heinz Berggruen. At the heart of the collection are the more than 100 works by Pablo Picasso and more than 60 paintings by Paul Klee. Henri Matisse is repre

The Martin-Gropius-Bau, previously used as a museum for applied art, is an exhibition building and art hall in Berlin. The building is intended for large exhibitions with a temporary character, but also the presentation of archaeological collections, linking these to current issues and discourses. U

The Museum in der Kulturbrauerei in Berlin shows the permanent exhibition "Everyday life in the GDR", using objects, documents, film and sound examples to illustrate the tension between the expectations of the political system and the real living conditions. The exhibition is divided into four main

The Bundeswehr Museum of Military History – Berlin-Gatow Airfield is a military history museum of the German Air Force Luftwaffe at a former Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield, RAF Gatow. It is one of the German military's largest military history museums and mainly focuses on the history

The German Resistance Memorial Centre is a memorial, museum with a permanent exhibition and research center in Berlin that is dedicated to German resistance to Nazism, occupying three floors of one of the Bendlerblock buildings. It was at the Bendlerblock in the inner courtyard where members of the

The German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst is a museum that is devoted to German-Soviet and German-Russian relations. The museum is housed in the historical venue of the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces in 1945, where it illustrates the history of German-Soviet relations from 1917

Who was the first spy? Did you know that drones were used in World War Two? Which secret service had the best codes? What is the difference between a honey-trap and the Romeo method? Who knows more about you – the Stasi, the NSA, Facebook or Miles and More? The German Spy Museum charts the history o

The Anne Frank Zentrum is the German partner organization of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Its permanent exhibition "All about Anne" invites audiences to explore Anne Frank's life and her diary as a way to personalize the history of the Holocaust. Interactive learning installations encourage vi

The Berlin Story Museum houses three floors of exhibitions that provide you with a concise overview of the history of Berlin. You will see period photographs, films, and other artefacts. As a part of a guided tour, you can access an authentic air raid shelter dating back to the World War II.

Over 1300 meters long, this is the longest still-standing section of the Berlin Wall - one of the most prominent symbols of the division of Europe by the Iron Curtain after the Second World War. With over 100 open-air paintings, The Wall Museum East Side Gallery is said to commemorate the gaining of

The Allied Museum is a museum in Berlin that documents the involvement of Western powers, the Allies (the United States, Britain and France) in Germany and Berlin between 1945 and 1994. The museum mainly shows the political and military history of the Cold War, illustrating the lives of the soldiers

The Berlin Museum of Medical History (Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum, BMM) is known for its pathological-anatomical collection, a cultural and medical historical significant collection of wet and dry specimens. A highlight are the 40 of the original 3300 specimens of the anatomist Johann Gottli

The Forum Willy Brandt Berlin is a location for historical education and political information in Berlin that has an exhibition on Willy Brandt and the political developments of the 20th century. He was a German statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 19

Designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, this building is one of the finest examples of the Neoclassical Architecture in Berlin. Being fully dedicated to classical antiquity, the Altes Museum houses several thousands of historically and culturally important artefacts. Its chronologically divided areas i

The Deutscher Dom is an old German Protestant church on the south side of the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin. The building with a five-leaf shape, designed by Martin Grünberg, was built in 1708 by Giovanni Simonetti. In 1785 a tower with a dome was added that resembles that of the Französischer Dom. The c

The Knoblauch House (Knoblauchhaus) in Berlin is a museum on the Biedermeier style. The former residential house of the Knoblauch family is is one of the few 18th-century Berlin town houses remaining at the original location. Needlemaster Johann Christian Knoblauch bought the property in 1759. After

The Blackbox Cold War Museum in Berlin features an exhibition housed inside a black, box-shaped building at Checkpoint Charlie. The museum is dedicated to the Cold War and features authentic exhibits and 16 media stations with film excerpts and interviews, relating to topics such as rearmament, host

Named after the famous Berlin painter Max Liebermann (a German painter and printmaker and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany), who lived here from 1892 to 1935, the building has been home to the Brandenburg Tor Foundation since 2000. It is dedicated to aesthetic education, org

The Museum chronicles the product culture of the 20th & 21st centuries, a culture marked by mass production & industrial manufacturing. At the core of our institution is the archive of the Deutsche Werkbund. Founded in 1907, this group of German artists, designers & manufacturers was one of the lead

The Ephraim-Palais is a Rococo edifice originally constructed in 1766 (and extensively reconstructed in 1987) in Berlin that served as a residential and a commercial place in the past. Nowadays, it houses a museum dedicated to history and culture of Berlin as well as exclusive presentations of objec

The Museum Otto Weidt is dedicated to Otto Weidt and his workshop for the blind and deaf, whom he tried to protect from persecution. Visitors can explore authentic rooms of the workshop where Jewish workers used to produce brooms and brushes. This place served also as a hiding place for some of the

The Märkisches Museum in Berlin presents a variety of objects on the culture and history of Berlin. The permanent exhibition „Here is Berlin!“ invites you to take a walk through Berlin's streets and neighborhoods, where visitors experience how Berlin has changed over the centuries. „Ask your city!“

The Domäne Dahlem (Domain Dahlem) is the historic manor of the former village Dahlem. It is an open-air museum for agricultural and food culture with an ecological focus in the southwest of Berlin. Agriculture has been practiced here for more than 800 years. The museum features the Culinarium which

The Hemp Museum Berlin (Hanf Museum Berlin) is the only museum in Germany that houses a permanent exhibition on the hemp plant. The exhibition covers approximately 250 m² and depicts everything related to hemp. The harvest and the processing of hemp are described from a historical point of view, in

The Feuerwehrmuseum Berlin is the fire brigade museum in Berlin that has been showing an exhibition on the history of the Berlin fire department (the largest and oldest professional fire brigade in Germany), since 1983. In the approximately 800 m² exhibition space, in addition to photo and video doc

The Gaslaternen Freilichtmuseum (The Gas Lantern Open Air Museum Berlin) in Berlin is a permanent exhibition of historic gas lanterns in the immediate vicinity of the Berlin S-Bahn station Tiergarten on the edge of the Great Tiergarten. Some gas lamps were dismantled and stored in the Museum of Tech

The Museum Village Duppel (Museumsdorf Düppel) is an open-air museum founded in 1975 at the protected landscape area Krummes Fenn in Berlin. The museum, which belongs to the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, has reconstructed an entire village and its environment as it would have existed in the Middle Ag

The Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum is a museum in Berlin that is devoted to the subject of leaving the GDR. Around four million people left the GDR to the Federal Republic between 1949 and 1990; 1.35 million of those passed the 1953 founded Refugee Center in Berlin-Marienfelde where they were car

The Villa Oppenheim, or Villa Sorgenfrei, is a villa in Berlin that is built in the style of the Renaissance Revival architecture. Built in 1881, it was the summer residence for Margarete Oppenheim and Otto Georg Oppenheim (a German lawyer and member of the Preußisches Obertribunal). Since 2012 Vill

The Museum for Architectural Drawing (Museum für Architekturzeichnung) in Berlin is a private museum run by the Tchoban Foundation. Every year, it presents around three to four exhibitions that are compiled from the Tchoban Foundation's collection or borrowed through collaborations with other museum

The Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin (Berlin Police History Collection) is located in Berlin's police headquarters uniforms, weapons and tools of the police and various killing instruments are exhibited.

The Museum of Asian Art (Museum für Asiatische Kunst) in Berlin houses some 20,000 Asian artifacts, making it one of the largest museums of ancient Asian art in the world. The permanently exhibited collection includes works of art from 4000 BC. to contemporary art. The Museum of Asian Art was one of

The Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik of the Free University of Berlin comprises about 2100 casts of Greek and Roman sculpture. Today's exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of the history and manifestations of Greek and Roman sculpture. The chronological arc extends from the Cycladic culture o

The (Museum of European Cultures) in Berlin (Museum der Europäischen Kulturen) is one of the three museums of the Berlin-Dahlem Museums complex in Berlin. The main focus of the collection is on art and cultural objects of European peoples and ethnic groups. With more than 270,000 museum pieces, the

The Museum Alliierte in Berlin deals with the history of the Allies in Berlin, the period of history that ended with the withdrawal of the Allies in the autumn of 1994 after the reunification of Germany.

The Schwules Museum (Berlin Gay Museum) is a museum and research centre in Berlin with collections on LGBT history and culture. The museum opened in 1985, making it the first museum in the world dedicated to gay history. The Schwules Museum organizes several temporary exhibitions every year, includi

Built in the 19th century, the Neue Synagoge Berlin has had a rough history, being damaged on several occasions. Due to its Moorish Revival style, it is fairly similar to a well-known Spanish palace, Alhambra. You are welcome to visit services that are still held here and to explore its museum. In s

Magicum Berlin Magic Museum is an interactive museum of magic in Berlin that takes its visitors on journey to the secret World of Magic, its permanent exhibition. The museum is located in the cellar vaults of the Hamburger Hof. Magical thinking gets revealed by African voodoo and shamanic rituals, t

The Plattenbau-Museumswohnung in Berlin is a 3-bedroom show flat from 1986, decorated as if the tenants, living there 30 years ago, have just left. The museum includes personal items, furniture and household products.

The Puppet Theatre Museum in Berlin (Puppentheater-Museum) is a Museum of Puppets (museum of marionettes and other theatrical puppets) in Berlin. As well as a continuous theatre performances, the museum also offers workshops for children.