"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.

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.

Lying between deserts, mountain chains and seas, Iran developed a fascinating cultural landscape. 360 objects from the time of the first advanced civilisations during the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the Safavid Empire in the early 18th century illustrate the outstanding significance of Iran as the initiator and centre of intercultural exchange. Exquisite artworks from the Sarikhani Collection in London and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin invite visitors to embark on a journey in time through the cultural heritage of Iran. The highlights include the great pre-Islamic empires of the Achaemenids and the Sassanids, the establishment of a Persian-Islamic culture, the masterly artistic achievements of the 9th to the 13th centuries and the Golden Age of the Safavids. They are brought together as in a multifaceted kaleidoscope in the copious illustrations and provide insight into the art of the courts and the urban elites.