Neues Museum

The Neues Museum on Berlin's Museumsinsel holds the Egyptian Collection with its famous bust of Nefertiti (c. 1340 BCE) and the Museum of Prehistory and Early History — but the building itself is equally the exhibit. Friedrich August Stüler designed the neoclassical brick structure, opened in 1855, which was bombed to a ruin during World War II and left largely untouched for decades in divided Berlin. David Chipperfield Architects began reconstruction in 1997 with a deliberate philosophy: rather than restore to a pristine state, they left war damage visible — weathered brickwork, missing ornamental plasterwork, and raw concrete insertions stand side by side without apology. When the museum reopened in 2009, the approach became an internationally cited benchmark in conservation practice. Visitors move through rooms in radically different states of preservation — Pompeian-style painted vaults alongside stripped brick walls — before arriving at the Egyptian Courtyard, where Nefertiti's original bust is displayed in a purpose-built rotunda.