Art › Berlin › The Pergamon Museum
The Ishtar Gate
The blue-glazed gate of Babylon, with its lions, bulls and dragons, at the end of the Processional Way.
King Nebuchadnezzar II built it around 575 BC as the eighth gate into Babylon, dedicated to the goddess Ishtar. Its bricks are glazed deep blue, with rows of bulls and dragons in yellow and white; the walls of the Processional Way leading up to it are lined with lions.
Robert Koldewey’s German expedition dug up the fragments from 1902 and the museum put the gate together again from them in the 1930s. Only the smaller front gate is here: the larger one behind it was too tall for the building. Stand before it in 3D ›
