Lottie and Lisa, a novel for children and comedy of errors written by the Berlin author Erich Kästner, entertains with the comical and impudent tricks of twin sisters. The author of the lines you are reading provocatively makes use of this comparison mainly to underscore the double experience, and therefore double enjoyment, that the Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island holds in store.

All over the world, museum-goers tend to naturally focus on the works in the museum; occasionally, they also notice the interior and exterior architecture. Berlin’s Neues Museum, however, is the exception: a double-entity, so to speak. Not only does it present, in classical style, the collections of the Egyptian Museum, its papyrus collection and the Museum of Pre- and Early History with its antiquities collection, but also draws attention to itself as a historical and contemporary document of destruction and reconstruction.

With this masterpiece of renovation, architect David Chipperfield has achieved more than simply the resurrection of the old building by Friedrich August Stüler. The old sections, even though only in form of perfectly-restored fragments, was preserved and intentionally used as a contrast to the new sections designed by Chipperfield. Taking a good look at and fully enjoying this architectural program is actually worth a visit to the museum in itself. Visiting the museum’s pharaonic world is the second trip.