Pergamon Museum to close for five years

Berlin's top museum to be restored

One of Berlin's main tourist attractions, the Pergamon Museum, is to close partially at the end of September for at least five years.

The northern and central halls, which contain the most popular exhibitions such as the Pergamon altar, close on 29 September and are scheduled to reopen again in 2019. Then work will start on the southern wing and the construction of a new extension, which will take until about 2025.

The Pergamon, which took 20 years to build and first opened in 1930, attracts over one million visitors a year and is made up of three collections, the Classical Antiquities, the Middle Eastern Museum and the Museum of Islamic art.

Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie will also close at the end of 2014 for a three-year restoration by David Chipperfield Architects. Chipperfield was also responsible for the successful renovation of the city's Neues Museum, which reopened in 2009.

During the run-up to the closure of the Pergamon the opening hours are being extended on Fridays and Saturdays until 20.00.