Nefertiti and Charlottenburg 11/25/25

Today we visited the Neues (New) Museum in Berlin. The museum is located on Berlin’s famous Museum Island, a natural island in the River Spree. The Neues is Berlin’s archeological museum, and is home to many Egyptian artifacts including a papyrus exhibit and the beautiful bust of Nefertiti. She is definitely the highlight of any visit to the Neues, but she is not without controversy. Many of Egypt’s famous artifacts were removed from Egypt in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s by various archeology teams from many European countries. Egypt is still demanding the bust be returned to Egypt but the Germans are asserting their rights to it (finders keepers). It is also interesting that the former USSR stole many of the artifacts from Germany’s museums after WWII, so I guess that’s also finders keepers??? Regardless, the bust is a beautiful piece of artwork and dates from 1345 BCE. Much has been written about the beauty and details of the limestone sculpture. We were only allowed photos from a distance. Other interesting exhibits include the Crown of Kerch from the 300’s CE, the Helios sculpture from the year 138 CE, and the Berlin Gold Hat from circa 1000 BCE.

After lunch, we took the train to visit the Christmas Market at Charlottenburg Palace. The palace itself is your typical European royalty “over the top gilded palace for rich folks while everyone else was starving” palace, of which we have seen many, so we didn’t go inside. We were just there for the Hot Aperols and the Nutella crepes. Yummy! The Christmas market here is quite beautiful and vast. We took a few spins around, and headed home to bed.

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