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Berlin (dpa) - Renovation of the Pergamon Museum, where some of the ancient world's finest buildings have been re-erected in lofty halls, is to begin in 2011, the state foundation that runs the Berlin Island of Museums said Monday.
The museum, which is already visited by 1 million people per year, is one of Germany's principal attractions, but has been little changed since it was completed in 1930 and patched up after Second World War bombardment damage. It will remain open during the work.
Peter-Klaus Schuster, director general of state museums, said care would be taken to preserve the Pergamon as a monument in its own right. Suggestions that an underground storey be added were abandoned because of the expense and for fear the building would be weakened.
There is a deposit of coal under the island, making the ground too soft to take added weight.
Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation which administers Berlin's former royal museums and libraries, said the Pergamon project was vital to the future of the island of treasures.
The other four museum buildings on the island in the Spree River are also being gradually renovated in work taking decades.
Rebuilding the Pergamon Museum alone will cost 351 million euros out of a 1.5-billion-euro budget for the whole island, Lehmann said.
The planning phase of the Pergamon project will begin in two to three years and the construction will be divided into phases so that some parts of the Pergamon can remain open throughout, Lehmann said.
He said a completion date had not yet been set.
The biggest visible change will be the addition of a glass-and- stone section, designed by Oswald Mathias Unger, that will bridge the riverside gap in the U-shaped museum, enabling visitors to walk right around the building without backtracking.
A courtyard in the centre will remain.
Among the Pergamon's greatest treasures is the outsized Pergamon altar to the gods that the museum is named after. Regarded as a wonder of the Greek world in ancient times, it was excavated at Bergama in modern Turkey and brought to Berlin from 1878 to 1886.
Also in the museum are colourful parts of the street of processions and the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon, along with the remarkable town gate of Milet, built by the Romans 1,800 years ago and still looking almost like new.
Other treasures in Berlin are a major collection of Islamic art and items from ancient Egypt including the bust of Queen Nefertiti.
Lehmann rejected media accusations that the building work, financed by the federal government, would go over-budget.
"You can count on us," he said.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
