Altes Museum

The Altes Museum was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and completed in 1830, and is one of the most important buildings of the Neoclassical era. Its monumental front has eighteen fluted Ionic columns, behind which lie a large atrium with a sweeping staircase and a rotunda with antique sculptures, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. The inscription on the portico dedicates the museum to the study of all antiquities and the free arts. Today it shows the permanent exhibition on the art and culture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, complemented by a display of ancient coins. It is run by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, which rents out some of its museum buildings for evening events through its own events company; no hire spaces or capacities are published for this building.