It was built from 1910 to 1930 by order of Emperor Wilhelm II and according to plans by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann in Stripped Classicism style.

[3][4][5] By the time the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum on Museum Island (today the Bodemuseum) had opened in 1904, it was clear that the edifice was not large enough to host all of the art and archaeological treasures being excavated under German supervision.

After his death in 1909 his friend Ludwig Hoffman took charge of the project and construction began in 1910, continuing during the First World War (1918) and the great inflation of the 1920s.

In 1945, the Red Army collected all of the loose museum items, either as war booty or to steal them while the fires were raging in Berlin.

The return of these items has been arranged in a treaty between Germany and Russia but, as of June 2003, is blocked by Russian restitution laws.

The collection expanded greatly with excavations in Olympia, Samos, Pergamon, Miletus, Priene, Magnesia, Cyprus, and Didyma.

The main exhibits are the Pergamon Altar from the 2nd century BC, with a 113-metre (371 ft) long sculptural frieze depicting the struggle of the gods and the giants, and the Gate of Miletus from Roman antiquity.

The Middle East Museum exhibition displays objects found by German archeologists and others from the areas of Assyrian, Sumerian, and Babylonian culture.

[9] In 2018 a temporary exhibition space just outside Museum Island and a short distance from Pergamon Museum was opened, housing a panorama of the ancient city by the Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi, a 3D reconstruction of the famous Pergamon altar by the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research and parts of the altar including the Telephos Frieze.