Märkisches Museum, Berlin

This is an extraordinary building that is well worth a visit if you are in Berlin. It lies on the south side of the River Spree, just opposite Fischer Island which adjoins the much more famous Museum Island. Whereas the five museums on the latter island are always well patronized, you should find yourself with a lot less company as you tour round the Märkisches Museum and take a leisurely stroll around its attractive grounds.

The museum looks at first as though it must be an accumulation of buildings that once housed a medieval monastery, but it actually dates from between 1901 and 1908, having been purpose-built as a museum to showcase exhibits from the local area of Berlin and Brandenburg.

The neo-Gothic architecture (by Ludwig Hoffmann) was inspired by buildings in the region that were built in true Gothic style, notably Wittstock Castle and St Catherine’s Church in the city of Brandenburg. In the entrance hall of the museum is a statue of the traditional hero Roland, this being a copy of a 15^th-century original.

The main hall features the original Gothic portal from the Berlin palace, demolished in 1931, of the Margraves of Brandenburg. Also to be seen is one of the original horse’s heads that was once part of the Quadriga on top of the Brandenburg Gate.

There is much more on show here that chronicles the history of Berlin from when the district was first settled up until the present day. Exhibits include the history of the theatre in Berlin and mechanical musical instruments that are played by musicians once a week – on Friday afternoons.

© John Welford

The Five Old Ladies of Museum Island, Berlin

Five elderly ladies live on Museum Island. Or, to be more accurate, they don’t actually live in the generally accepted meaning of that word, because they are the spirits who hover over five iconic buildings and who invite anyone who passes by to visit their homes.

The ladies may not be real, but the buildings they haunt most certainly are. Museum Island is a real place, being in the heart of Berlin and surrounded by the narrow waterways of the River Spree and the Spree Canal. This is where you will find Berlin’s four oldest museums and its original art gallery, plus the magnificent cathedral known as the Berliner Dom. There are no other buildings at the northern end of the Island.

The ladies issue their invitations with a few conditions. One is that you pay a few euros for the privilege and that you leave your backpack in the cloakroom before you start looking around. However, a free audioguide – in your own language if not too obscure - is offered and is well worth accepting.

The most senior of the ladies is the spirit of the Altes Museum. This was opened in 1830 in a magnificent neo-classical building that was originally built to house the Prussian monarch’s collection of paintings and antiquities. It now stages permanent exhibitions of the art and culture of Ancient Greece downstairs and Etruscan and Roman art upstairs.

Next in line is the lady who looks after the Neues Museum, whose home first opened in 1855 as a means of relieving pressure on the Altes Museum, the collections of which were growing too fast for the available space. Bomb damage during World War Two meant that it had to undergo considerable rebuilding and it did not reopen until 2009, but it now houses a major collection of Egyptian art with the world-famous bust of Queen Nefertiti as its star exhibit.

Another major collection at the Neues Museum features the Stone Age and other prehistoric eras.

The third old lady presides over the Alte Nationalgalerie, which opened in 1876. The building is a copy of a Greek temple, reached by a double staircase. This lady has a name, which is Germania, the patroness of German art, and her image forms part of the tympanum above the entrance to the gallery.

The national art collection has now vastly exceeded the capacity of the Alte Nationalgalarie and it is now also housed in five other buildings around Berlin. The original building displays works by German masters such as Caspar David Friedrich, but there are also paintings by French Impressionists and even a few pieces by John Constable, although these are not easy to find.

The Bode Museum is the preserve of the fourth lady, her home having been opened in 1904. This museum had to be built to fit the space available at the top end of the island, which is a rough triangle cut off from the rest by a railway line that runs across the island.

The museum is named after Wilhelm von Bode, who was Director of the Berlin state museums at the time the museum opened, but before 1956 it was known as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The collection is somewhat mixed, including sculptures, Byzantine art, and an outstanding coin collection that includes items from ancient Athens and Rome.

The new kid on the block, as far as our old ladies is concerned, is the patroness of what is arguably the most remarkable museum of the lot. The Pergamon Museum, which opened in 1930, is unlike anything one is likely to see anywhere else in the world, and it owes its existence to the activities of German archaeologists who worked in the Middle East during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and sometimes acted in ways that many people today would question. That said, the results of their efforts are well worth seeing.

The Pergamon Museum is currently undergoing a major redevelopment, which means that the main reason for its naming is not available to view. This is the Pergamon Altar, which was discovered in the ancient city of Pergamon in western Turkey and reconstructed in Berlin at around the turn of the 20^th century. The Pergamon Museum was built specifically to display the Altar and associated friezes and other objects from the site.

The Museum was expanded to allow for the display of other huge monuments, and these are what can be seen at present in the South Wing of the Museum while the other parts remain closed.

You can therefore walk down the Processional Way of the city of Babylon and then, like King Nebuchadnezzar, walk through the Ishtar Gate. Both of these are adorned with thousands of brick-shaped glazed blue tiles that are decorated with images of real and mythical animals. These were discovered in fragments and shipped to Berlin in more than 500 huge crates, to be re-assembled according to documentary evidence from the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

When you go through the Ashtar Gate you find that you have also walked through the Market Gate from the ancient Greek colonial city of Miletus. This is a massive two-storey structure that stands nearly 95 feet across and 55 feet high. It dates from the 2^nd century AD and stood as a link between two public areas in the town until it was felled by an earthquake in the 10^th century.

The reconstruction in Berlin contains around 60% of the original marble blocks, despite further damage having been caused during World War Two.

The Miletus Hall also contains a superb mosaic floor from a house in Miletus, a round tomb from north of Rome, and a partial reconstruction of a porticoed hall from Pergamon, this being one of the few items currently on display in the Pergamon Museum that actually came from that city.

Go upstairs and you will find exhibits relating to Islamic Art. These include the remarkable Aleppo Room, consisting of painted wall panels from around 1600 that once adorned a merchant’s house in the Syrian city of Aleppo. It is probably just as well that the panels are now in Berlin, seeing that the building, which had survived for hundreds of years, fell victim to bombing in the recent conflict in that region.

The five old ladies are doing a grand job in looking after a huge quantity and variety of treasures in Berlin. Long may they continue so to do.

© John Welford

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum

I visited the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum during a short visit I made to Baltimore in June 2006, which was the only time I have ever been to the United States. It was the last day of my stay in the city, the conference I had attended was over, and I had time to kill before leaving for the airport and an evening flight home. Railways have always been a keen interest of mine, and the museum was an obvious place to go.

As it was only about a mile from my hotel it was within easy walking distance, so it was a surprise to find that the only entrance appeared to be from the car park. Don’t you Americans ever walk anywhere? I had to dodge under the barrier to find the front door! Having found my way in, it was good to be welcomed personally and given a one-to-one introduction by an elderly lady who was as clearly enthusiastic about historical railways as I am.

She explained the history of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, of which the museum complex represented the eastern terminus. It was interesting to learn that this site is of major importance in the history of railroads in the United States, as the B&O can lay claim to being the nation’s first passenger railroad, the first section having opened in 1830. As I live very close to one of Great Britain’s oldest railway lines, which opened in 1832, I felt a certain affinity!

The 40-acre museum site is important not only for its exhibits of locomotives, rolling stock and other pieces of machinery, but for the buildings in which they are housed. Pride of place goes to the magnificent Roundhouse, which encloses a space of more than an acre and rises to a height of 125 feet. When completed in 1884, it was the world’s largest circular industrial building. In February 2003, the building was severely damaged, along with some of the exhibits, when the weight of accumulated snow caused the roof to cave in. However, the building was restored and re-opened in November 2004.

Inside the Roundhouse a number of smaller historic locomotives are on display, and steps allow you to walk into the cabs (of some of the exhibits) to see where the engine drivers worked. Among the exhibits is “Atlantic”, a locomotive built for the B&O in 1832; this has a vertical boiler and two vertical cylinders, its pushrod action earning it the nickname of “Grasshopper”. Other exhibits include locomotives that were damaged in the 2003 roof collapse.

The larger locomotives are housed either in the open air or in other parts of the Mt Clare Shops complex. Standing at ground level beside these monsters of the rails is a humbling experience, seeing that the driving wheels of some of them are more than six feet in diameter. The collection includes one of only two surviving “Allegheny” class locos, a 2-6-6-6 giant (built for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad) that weighs more than 775,000 pounds and, with its tender, is 125 long. This was the most powerful steam locomotive ever built, capable of hauling loads of 5,000 tons at 45mph, or 100,000 tons at 15mph.

Knowledgeable guides describe the locos and answer your questions. The guide on the tour I joined had once worked as an engine driver, which was hard to imagine, seeing how small he was alongside these iron beasts!

However, it would be a mistake to think that the B&O Railroad Museum is all about steam locos. This is a museum that has something for most people. During the Spring/Summer months you can take a short train ride along the one-and-a-half mile length of track that is still in place, although not by steam traction. There is a splendid open-air model railway and indoor exhibits of scale models and other railway bits and pieces. There are also film shows, activities and rides for the kids, and events at various times throughout the year.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, which was well worth the price of admission. Although it is now several years since my trip to Baltimore, the visit is still very fresh in my memory. Should I ever find myself there again, the B&O Railroad Museum will certainly be high on my list of places to go.

© John Welford