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The Gemäldegalerie possesses one of the world’s finest collections of European art from the 13th to 18th century. After the collection was founded in 1830, it was systematically built up and perfected. The exhibition includes masterpieces by artists from every age of art history such as van Eyck, Bruegel, Dürer, Raphael, Tizian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Vermeer and Rembrandt.

The collection

This newly built museum is situated at the Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz. It has about 7,000 square metres of exhibition space. A complete tour of the 72 rooms covers almost two kilometres.

Two of the major sections are formed by Italian painting from the 13th to 16th century and Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th century.

Old German painting of the Late Gothic and Renaissance eras is represented by such great masters as Konrad Witz, Albrecht Dürer, Baldung Grien, Cranach and Holbein.

The octagonal Rembrandt room enjoys a key position at the heart of the museum. The sixteen works by this artist form one of the largest and highest quality collections of Rembrandt paintings. They are flanked by additional gems of Dutch and Flemish painting of the 17th century. Portraits, genre paintings, interiors, landscapes and still-lifes illustrate certain artists’ preferences for particular types of themes.

Italian, French, German and English painting of the 18th century is presented in six rooms. This splendid collection of paintings includes works by Canaletto, Watteau, Pesne and Gainsborough.

The main gallery contains one thousand masterpieces. These paintings are complemented by four hundred works in a study gallery on the lower floor.

Visitors also have access to a digital gallery with computerized information in German, English and French. Audio-tours are also available in German and English.

Tempelhof was first officially designated as an airport on 8 October 1923. Lufthansa was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926.
The old terminal, originally constructed in 1927, received politicians and celebrities from around the world during the 1930s. As part of Albert Speer’s plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernst Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934.
The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as “the mother of all airports”. With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet has a charmingly intimate feel; planes can taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walk through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. Tempelhof is served conveniently by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station).
Zentralfiughafen Tempelhof-Berlin had an advantage of central location just minutes from the heart of Berlin and quickly became one of the world’s busiest airports. Tempelhof saw its greatest pre-war days during 1938-1939 when more than 52 foreign and 40 domestic aircraft arrived and departed daily.
The air terminal was designed as headquarters for Deutsche Lufthansa, the German commercial airline. As a forerunner of today’s modern airports, the building was designed with many unique features including giant arc-shaped hangars for aircraft parking. Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II.
The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird’s spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations.

Cinemaxx is the name of a company with several large multiplex cinemas in Berlin and across Germany.

The Cinemaxx on Potsdamer Platz plays english language films – which makes it a “have-to-be” place for expats that do not like translated films. In Germany it is standard that all films are completely translated into German.

The “Jüdisches Museum Berlin” is a museum in Berlin covering two millennia of German Jewish history.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin was originally founded in Oranienburger Strasse in 1933. It was closed in 1938 by the Nazi regime. The idea to revive the museum was first voiced in 1971, and an “Association for a Jewish Museum” was founded in 1975. A Jewish department of the Berlin Museum was opened after the Berlin Museum first displayed an exhibition on Jewish history in Berlin in 1978. In 1999 the Jewish Museum Berlin was granted status as an independent institution. A building by Daniel Libeskind was finished in 1999 and officially opened in 2001.

The director of the museum is Professor W. Michael Blumenthal, who is originally from Berlin and was US Secretary of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.

is a popular vantage point along the Blyde River Canyon, in South Africa.

At God’s Window on the Escarpment, majestic cliffs plunge over 700 meters to the Lowveld and the game reserves which have made the area one of Africa’s prime wildlife destinations. From this Escarpment – a 250km long rampart of sheer cliffs – opens a vista into a plush forest the Eden-like esthetic appearance of which prompted the name. It is possible to see over the Kruger National Park right into neighbouring Mozambique on a clear day.

God’s Window played an important role in the plot of the 1980 cult film The Gods Must Be Crazy. Near the end of the movie, the Bushman character Xi (played by Namibian bush farmer N!xau) traveled to God’s Window, believing it to be the end of the Earth, and threw a Coke bottle from the escarpment. The bottle, which Xi had found near the beginning of the movie, set the plot into motion, and the movie focused heavily on his reactions to Western civilization as he traveled from his clan’s home to God’s Window.

Mpumalanga, (name changed from Eastern Transvaal on 24 August 1995), is a province in South Africa. The name means “the place where the sun rises” in Swazi. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, north of KwaZulu-Natal and bordering Swaziland and Mozambique. It constitutes 6.5% of South Africa’s land area. In the north it borders on Limpopo and to the west the Free State and Gauteng. The capital is Nelspruit. Prior to 1994, Mpumalanga was part of the Transvaal Province.

There are several of these throughout Berlin.

In the Pariser Str. The University of Berlin’s economic faculty is usually crashing the place – and in the Schiffbauerdamm, the place is usually stuffed with tourists…

The Deutsche Guggenheim is called Deutsche Guggenheim, because of the Deutsche Bank, and not because of its location in Germany.
The little gallery is on the ground floor of a Deutsche Bank building on th Unter den Linden Boulevard. It has a great little museumshop, and a quiet place to drink a nice cup of coffee. The exhibitions change regularly, showing the Deutsche Bank collection of fine art mostly.

Hamburger Bahnhof is a former train station in Berlin, Germany on Invalidenstraße in the Berlin-Tiergarten district opposite the Charité. Severely damaged during World War II, it has not been used as a station since then. (North-bound long distance trains from Berlin now leave from Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the former Lehrter Bahnhof, which is just 400m to the south-west.) It found a new use in 1987 as the Museum für Gegenwart.

The station was built according to Friedrich Neuhaus’ plans in 1846/47 as the starting point of the Berlin-Hamburg railroad, it is the only still existing terminus building in Berlin from the late classic period, and counts as one of the oldest station buildings in Germany.

The Kurfürstendamm, locally known as Ku’damm, is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin, Germany. The street takes its name from the former Kurfürsten (Electors) of the Holy Roman Empire. It is the main shopping road and can be considered as the 5th Avenue of Berlin. Most famous designers have their shops there as well as some car manufacturers have their show rooms there.

When Berlin was separated into East and West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm became the leading commercial street in West Berlin. It starts near Bahnhof Zoo (that used to be a major railway station, before the Lehrter Bahnhof was opened which is now the Berliner Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station)) at the Zoologischer Garten, near the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and runs through Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.