Art › Berlin › The Pergamon Museum
The Pergamon Altar
A whole Greek altar with its battle of the gods and the giants, rebuilt inside a museum.
King Eumenes II built the altar on the acropolis of Pergamon, in what is now western Turkey, in the first half of the second century BC. Round its base runs a frieze 113 m long of the gods fighting the giants, figures more than life-size twisting out of the marble.
The German engineer Carl Humann dug it up from 1878 and the pieces went to Berlin, where the museum was built round it. The hall is closed for rebuilding until about 2027. Stand before it in 3D ›
