The estimated cost of renovating Berlin’s Pergamon Museum has rocketed to €477m, almost double the initial estimate of €261m. The German government has warned that the full reopening of the museum will be delayed by four years until 2023.
The reason for the delay is the discovery of a vast concrete pumping station under the museum, according to a spokesman for the construction ministry who spoke to the Deutsche Presse Agentur. The station was put in place during the museum’s construction between 1910 and 1930 to remove water from the building site, and should have been removed once the work was over.
In order to reinforce the foundations, the pumping station has to be extracted but heavy machinery would risk damaging the museum’s prize attraction, the Pergamon Altar. The altar, which is more than 2,000 years old, has been packed up behind scaffolding and protective sheets during the renovation.
Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation that oversees Museum Island, says he was, “to put it mildly, shocked” at the spiralling costs and the delays. Parzinger has proposed a temporary solution to display parts of the Pergamon Altar. In an interview with Deutschlandradio, he said the new solution would be presented publicly in the next few days.
The Pergamon, on Museum Island, is the most-visited museum in Berlin and one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions, with around one million visitors a year. Most of it is still accessible to visitors during renovations. The five museums on the island are being restored one at a time. The Neues Museum, Bode Museum and Neue Nationalgalerie have already been completed. The restoration of the Altes Museum will follow that of the Pergamon. A new central visitor centre for the island, the James Simon Gallery designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, is also under construction. The whole complex was due to be finished in 2025, but the delays at the Pergamon throw that timeframe into doubt.
