Museo de los Instrumentos Musicales en Berlín

The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum (German: Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin) is located at the Kulturforum on Tiergartenstraße in Berlin, Germany. The Museum holds over 3,500 musical instruments from the 16th century onward and is one of the largest and most representative musical instrument collections in Germany. Objects include a portable harpsichord once owned by Prussia’s Queen Sophie Charlotte, flutes from the collection of Frederick the Great, and Benjamin Franklin ’s glass harmonica.

Today there are over 3,500 instruments in the collection and about 800 exhibits are presented in permanent exhibition. Those instruments that are still playable are played regularly. Today the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) is part of the State Institute for Music Research, under the auspices of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) and the State Institute for Music Research (SIM) form a unit in Berlin. Their common building was constructed between 1979 and 1984 by Edgar Wisniewski after the designs of architect Hans Scharoun, who had died in 1972.

The museum is one of the few places where a theater organ can be heard live: the 1929 Mighty Wurlitzer organ (with 1228 pipes, 175 stops and 43 pistons), which had been formerly in the concert hall of Ferdinand Werner von Siemens 's villa, the grandson of the Siemens founder. Every Thursday after the guided tour at 6 pm and every Saturday at noon the instrument is played publicly. The museum also has its own concert hall, the Curt-Sachs -Saal, where chamber concerts take place regularly.