Pergamon Altar

Sometime between the years 200 and 150 B.C., king Eumenes II of Pergamon (nowadays Bergama, Turkey) ordered the construction of a monument known today as Pergamon Altar on one of the terraces of his city's acropolis. The large structure depicts, in a 113-meter-long high-relief frieze, the mythological battle between the Giants and almost twenty Olympian gods, the collision of chaos and order, that ended with the lesser being incarcerated. Also shown are scenes from the life of Telephus, founder of the city of Pergamon, according to legend, and son of Heracles and Auge. It may have been designed by Phyromachos, a great Greek architect. Besides honoring the gods (Zeus and Athena in particular), the Altar was built to legitimize Eumenes' reign, and its everyday use would be as a place of sacrifice.

The acropolis was dug from 1878 to 1886 by Carl Humann and Alexander Conze, with support from the German Empire, wary of the cultural level already reached by other European countries and worried about the remnants being looted and used as a quarry. An agreement between the Ottoman Empire and the Germans was reached so that the fragments found would become the property of Berlin's museums. The structure was then sent to the German capital and reassembled from thousands of pieces at the beginning of the 20th century. It was again taken down and stored for the duration of World War II in an air-raid shelter but, when the Red Army conquered Berlin, it was taken to the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad as war trophies. By the end of the 1950s the Soviet Union began returning the pieces to East Germany, by 1994 a complete restoration that would cost three million euros started and in 2004 it was presented to the public again.

The Turkish Ministry of Culture demanded in 1998 and 2001 the return of the Altar (and other artifacts) by Germany, but it remains in Berlin, at the Pergamonmuseum, first opened in 1930 and built solely for the structure, and is the most sought after artwork in Germany, where the Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon and the monumental Mshatta Facade can also be found.