Berlin Puts Allied History on Parade

Berlin is already a city of great museums, but any visitor not sated by its offering of classical marbles, Weimar-era art and chilling documentation of the Holocaust will soon have yet another opportunity to revel in historic artifacts. On June 28, a new institution, the Allied Museum, will open on Berlin’s south side, in the heart of the former U.S. military sector.

The new museum will celebrate the changing role of the Western Allies, who arrived in Berlin as occupying military powers, then became protectors against Stalinism and over the years helped to shape modern Germany into a democratic nation.

Not surprisingly, many of the displays will be of a military nature: the original Checkpoint Charlie station; part of a CIA surveillance tunnel that ran from West to East Berlin; a cargo plane from the airlift; and models of Soviet tanks, rocket launchers and missiles, built by British military intelligence officers during the Cold War.

The Allied Museum will be open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Wednesday. Admission is free. The address: Outpost-Clayallee 135, 14195 Berlin. Information: tel. 011-49-30-818-1-999-91 in Germany or the German National Tourist Office in New York, tel. (212) 661-7200.