Jewish Museum Berlin

The Jewish Museum Berlin stands in the Kreuzberg district, south of Checkpoint Charlie. It opened in 2001 and, with about 3,500 square metres of exhibition space, is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. An earlier Jewish museum opened in Berlin in 1933 on Oranienburger Straße but was closed by the Nazis in 1938.

The museum is made up of three buildings. The entrance is in the Kollegienhaus, a baroque building from the 18th century that once housed a court. From there an underground passage leads into the extension designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind, a zinc-clad building with a sharp zigzag plan and slashed windows. Across the street, the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy opened in 2012 in a former flower market hall, also redesigned by Libeskind.

Inside the Libeskind building, three sloping underground corridors called the Axes represent continuity, exile and the Holocaust. The Axis of Exile leads out to the Garden of Exile, where 49 tall concrete pillars stand on tilted ground. The Axis of the Holocaust ends in the Holocaust Tower, a dark, unheated concrete space about 24 metres high lit only by a narrow slit. Empty voids run vertically through the building, and in the Memory Void visitors can walk over Shalekhet, an installation by Menashe Kadishman of 10,000 cut steel faces.

The permanent exhibition, Jewish Life in Germany: Past and Present, opened on 23 August 2020 and runs from medieval communities to the present day, alongside temporary exhibitions and a children's museum, ANOHA. The museum welcomed more than 11 million visitors between 2001 and 2017.

The permanent exhibition is free. Temporary exhibitions in the Old Building cost 10 euros, or 4 euros at the reduced rate, with free entry for visitors under 18 and for Berlin Museum Pass holders. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm, with last admission at 5 pm, and is closed on Mondays. Allow at least three hours. Security checks are in place at the entrance. The nearest U-Bahn stations are Hallesches Tor and Kochstraße, each about ten minutes on foot.

The museum also closes on a few single days, including 14 November and 24 December 2026, and Shalekhet and the Gallery of the Missing are closed from 23 November to 4 December 2026, so check the calendar on jmberlin.de before you go.