Berlin is ideal for museum enthusiasts like myself because of its multitude of museums. It even has a Museum Island, a cluster of museums on the northern half of an island in the Spree River, right in the middle of the city. Museum Island consists of five museums, each with a different focus and each housed in a magnificent building.
However, for German history, the city’s best museum is the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum), which is just down the road from Museum Island. The museum features exhibits covering 2,000 years of German history including medieval ages and the 20th century.
It’s arranged in chronological order so you start from prehistoric times and finish in the 20th century. Some of the more eye-catching exhibits include suits of knight armor and weaponry, giant medieval paintings of battles and famous figures like Napoleon Bonaparte, German cars, pieces of the Berlin Wall, as well as World War II propaganda posters.
True to Germanic form, the displays are organized in an orderly, linear manner, and the military displays and paintings from the Middle Ages are particularly striking. But in a submissive and contrite gesture, the World War II display features posters and newspaper reports from the US on the fall of Nazi Germany and the death of Hitler.
However, I wasn’t able to see everything since the museum was about to close and I rushed through some of the galleries. A second visit is definitely in order if I ever return to Berlin.
How to get there: The museum is just west of Museum Island. It is in between Berlin Friedrichstraße and S Hackescher Markt stations on the S-Bahn rapid transit line.
Gothic armor from 1470
Official state portrait of Napoleon Bonaporte after his coronation as emperor in the early 19th century
One of the paintings in the series Augsburg: Labors of the Months: Autumn, from the mid-16th century
Front page of Hitler’s death from Star and Stripes, the US Army’s newspaper
Cardinal Richelieu, a French cardinal and statesman made infamous from The Three Musketeers
Window glass from Kiel Castle showing Wilhelm I, first Emperor of Germany 
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