Berlin 2016 - Bode Museum

Visiting too many museums on the same day can be a numbing experience. We decided to break our visits to the Museum Island to 2 days - taking in a couple of museums on each visit. The last museum we visited in Berlin was The Bode Museum - which recently made it into the headlines in March 2017, when one of its exhibits - a giant gold coin made of 100kg of pure gold - with a market value of around 4.0 million euros, was stolen in an early morning heist. The gold coin was a commemorative piece issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007. It is 53 cm in diameter and 3cm thick, and features a portrait of the Queen.

The Bode Museum is a neo-Baroque building built between 1897 to 1904. It was designed by the court architect of Emperor Frederick III - Ernst von Ihne. The building sits impressively at the Western tip of the Museum Island - and is curved at the main entrance to follow the contour of the island.

The neo-Baroque splendour of the building is carried into the interiors - with beautiful ornate columns and a glass domed atrium in the main lobby.

The Bode Museum is home to an impressive collection of sculpture and artifacts from the Byzantine and Gothic period around Europe. It also features the World's largest collection of coins - unfortunately we did not have the time to explore that.