The building itself is a fine place to look at the paintings. Still, the rooms are of graciously large proportions, allowing the paintings room to breathe, the entire exhibition floor is skylit for natural lighting, and fabric panels on the walls lend color and warmth, as do the parquet floors. A foreign culturevulture visiting Berlin quickly perceives the intensity of this city's passion for opera and classical music, but one gets the impression that the visual arts play second fiddle in the local cultural band. What is there is room after room of paintings, ranging from the medieval to around 1800, with the greatest strength in northern European works - which does not mean that you will not come upon a Botticelli, a Caravaggio, or, specifically, Raphael's Terranuova Madonna, a masterwork as nearly a perfect pleasure today as it must have been when it was painted a half millennium ago. What one finds in the northern works, though, is both quality and quantity.
Great art connects humanity over the centuries.
With some painters it is a special joy to find even one canvas. Don't think of this as a gallery to be seen in an hour or a day or a week. Think of it as a treasure trove to be dipped into over the years and savored.