Galeries Lafayette (!)

Our last exploring/touring day in Berlin was entirely en pied, walking first from our apartment down Chausseestrasse and Friedrichstrasse, across the river, past Unter den Linden, to the Galeries Lafayette department store. In terms of size, it's not KaDeWe, nor is it even close to the grand magasin on Boulevard Haussmann. But hey, it's French, and the food hall was wonderfully French, an island in a sea of kraut and wurst and rye. 

Looking up into the cupola from the ground floor;
sort of reminiscent of the grand cupola at Haussmann,
only not very high and definitely not Art Nouveau

And down to the food hall; sort of reminiscent of the rain vortex
at the Jewel at Changi airport; sort of...in the dry season maybe

But, hey! we're in France!

Sort of

Individual quiche and salad, with little oil bottle

Is Bonne Maman challenging Nutella?

Did not travel well, but, hey!

The moutarde famine continues, even unto Allemagne

But hey!

Pergamon Panorama Museum

Lastly that day we stopped by the Pergemon Panaorama Museum, across the street from the Bode, still on Museum Island. The Panorama thing is a special installation, a colossal panorama of ancient Pergamum on the day in 129CE when Emperor Hadrian visited the city. Developed in 2011 or so, it has been housed in its present building since 2018. Along with the Panorama are a variety of artifacts from the ancient city. It was interesting and impressive, and historically accurate, by our lights, although those accustomed to Disney production values might not be so impressed.

The Panorama fills the cylindrical thing

To best view all 360 degrees, one surmounts the special viewing
tower--we rode the lift

Sacrificial area, appropriately bloody 

And smoky

Sculptor's workshop

Top of the theater--we've been there

Not sure what these folks are up to

VIP box at the theater

Even then, things were covered in scaffolding

In the valley below, the odeon, the circus, and the coliseum, with
awnings extended

Statues painted, as they would have been

Waiting area for future sacrifices

Us, there

Old National Gallery

With specific interests and goals, we made rather short work of the Old National Gallery...

Approaching the Old National Gallery

Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano, 1840; the ladies swooning

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, Twin Portrait of the Brother Grimm,
1855

Caspar David Friedrich, Greifswald Harbor, 1818;
an almost exact contemporary of Turner...wonder
whether they ever met

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Cathedral by the Water, 1813

The Lenbach Wagner, 1895

Lorenz Gedon, Wagner bust, 1883

Lenbach 's Bismarck, 1884

Max Liebermann, The Flax Spinners in Laren, 1887 

The museum has an entire large hall of French Impressionsists...
Monet's View of Vetheuil sur Seine, 1880 

Manet's In the Conservatory, 1879

Cezanne, Mill on the Couleuvre at Pontoise, 1881 

Renoir, Chesnut Tree in Bloom, 1881

We'd read that the the former Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has an
apartment on Museum Island overlooking the Pergamon; we think
this was it...

Neues Museum, 2022

Next up was the Neues Museum, the New Museum, where the really old stuff is, which we'd visited also in 2012, posting on the Troy bits and also the Egypt bits. Pride of the place is the Nefertiti bust; so much so that no pix are permitted.

But, standing outside the room, waiting for the guards to
turn their backs, I did get this one memorable shot

We spent rather more time with the Neantherthals,
the Neolithics, then the Celts, this time

Nice diorama of an elderly artisan fashioning 
a Venus from ivory

Cycladic figures--the Neolithics got around rather more than
one might think

Celtic ornaments

The great Golden Hat...Celtic, actually a device
for astronomical calculations

Among the scene-setting large paintings adorning the Neues Museum

Lions Gate replica from Mycenae

Now looking at Trojan loot, entering the Schliemann exhibit

Heinrich Schliemann, the great adventurer who made his fortune
in the California gold fields and who figured the best way to
find Troy was to read Homer...

Priam's Mask?...rather unclear how much loot was looted by the
Russians, how much was in Turkey or Greece...

More of the haul

Still the main draw...a photo of a photo