Museum of Decorative Arts

The Museum of Decorative Arts, known in German as the Kunstgewerbemuseum, is one of the oldest and most significant museums of its kind in Germany. Its Berlin home at the Kulturforum, near the Philharmonie and the Neue Nationalgalerie, places it at the centre of the city's remarkable concentration of cultural institutions in the Tiergarten district. The collection spans more than a thousand years of European craftsmanship, from medieval goldwork and Renaissance bronzes to Jugendstil furniture and twentieth-century industrial design. Highlights include the Guelph Treasure, a group of sacred objects from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that ranks among the most important surviving collections of medieval ecclesiastical art in the world.

Entry tickets to the Kunstgewerbemuseum give access to permanent galleries that trace the history of craft and design across ceramics, glass, textiles, metalwork, and fashion. The building itself, completed by Rolf Gutbrod in the 1980s, is a considered piece of Brutalist architecture whose interior circulation is designed to guide visitors through the collection chronologically.