"This illustrated book guides the viewer through the museum of Berlin's Museum Island, highlighting major works in all five institutions. The tour spans from the Antiquities Collecion in Schinkel's Altes Museum to pantings and sculptures in the Alte Nationalgalerie, from great show pieces of ancient times in the Pergamon Museum to the Sculpture Collection in the Bode Museum and includes the Neues Museum"--Jacket.

"Antiquity on Display" offers an insight into the history of the imaginative reproductions of architecture housed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the 19th century to the present.

The Egyptian Museum collection in Berlin is one of the world's great collections of antiquities from Ancient Egypt. Among its many masterpieces is the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, the internationally celebrated object star of the collection. The collection's origins were in the 1698 purchase of the antiquities assembled by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, and it was greatly augmented by expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During the Cold War the works were divided between East and West, but they have since been reunited on Berlin's Museum Island, and will now be at the heart of the rebuilt Neues Museum that opens in October 2009 for the first time since World War Two. Featuring beautiful all-new photography, an authoritative text and stunning new design, this book works equally well as a guide to a great museum collection or as an illustrated general introduction to the world of Ancient Egypt. AUTHOR: Professor Dietrich Wildung is a world expert on Ancient Egypt and Sudan. Until 2009 he was the Director of the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, Berlin. 150 colour illustrations

During World War 2 the Neues Museum was almost completely destroyed. Now, on the Berlin Museum Island with its tremendous diversity of demands for the restoration it has become the classic example for the preservation of historic monuments. It is rebuilt due to the plans of the world renown architect David Chipperfield. The great reopening of this building (a main work of the Schinkel scholar Friedrich August Stueler) is scheduled for March 2009. The present book shows the history from its origins under Frederic Wilhelm IV of Prussia, the various phases of conversation and restoration of the war-ruin during the different systems after war to the considerations of preservation, modern building technique and current utilization.