Dahlem Museums

The Museum Center Berlin-Dahlem is a historic building complex in Berlin's Dahlem district, known today primarily as the home of the Museum of European Cultures, part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums). Planning for the complex dates back to the years before World War I, when Wilhelm von Bode conceived an ensemble devoted to four continents. The oldest part of the complex is the building designed by Bruno Paul for the Asian Collection, completed between 1914 and 1923. After World War II, the site grew in importance because Museum Island lay in the eastern part of divided Berlin. In the 1960s and 1970s, extensive postwar modernist additions were built to house a range of ethnological and art-historical collections. After reunification, the holdings were reorganized several times, and many museums moved to other Berlin locations such as the Humboldt Forum or the Pergamon Museum. Today, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Museum of European Cultures continue to use the buildings, particularly for research and cultural presentations.