Today's Tagesspiegel describes the financial and structural woes of Berlin's Pergamon Museum. Around 800,000 people visit the museum each year; highlights include the Altar of Pergamon (a full scale reconstruction of the entrance to a Greek temple, and much of the original frieze, taken from Bergama, Turkey; Turkish officials would like the pieces back) and the Ishtar gate from the 6th century BCE. The museum and its neighbor museums on the Museum Island are in serious need of major repairs: parts of the building are structurally unstable; the entrance to the building is poorly designed; inside, it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, which isn't particularly good for the collection of antique rugs, for example. Pipes have burst on occasion, threatening to destroy precious artifacts. The electrical wiring is a planless maze. And let's not forget the sixty year-old bullet holes that still checker the facade.

Plans for the restoration of the museum have been developed, but the government is balking at the 325 million Euro (around $350 million) price tag. It looks like serious work isn't planned to begin until 2015 or later.

I first saw visited the museum in 1989 as an exchange student in West Berlin, while the island was still in what was called East Berlin. The monumental exhibits are simply unbelievable unless you see them in person: much more impressive than the Temple of Dendur at the Met, for example. This museum was responsible for an important part of my education. If you haven't seen it, go. Aside from the exhibits, the interplay between bullet holes, German fascination with classicism, and the heritage of East German economic and political failure is worth seeing. According to the article, there's no hurry; let's just hope the museum can stay open while the repairs are on hold.

You can look at the Pergamon Museum's official web site in English here, and the web site for the Museum Island as a whole, here.