In the last third of the 19th century, as the great nation-states and empires of Europe took shape, capital city museums entered an era of "gigantomania". On the one hand, they acquired an immense size, by being fitted out, like the two great imperial museums of Vienna, built in 1891, or refurbished, like the British Museum or the imperial museums of the Louvre which, in their new architecture, numbered thirteen - the Louvre was then an agglomeration of different museums. This period saw a boom in museum construction, in provincial cities such as Amiens and Marseille, and in Europe, in Budapest and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.
At the same time, these museums accumulated more and more objects thanks to improved means of transport (steamboats, railroads), enabling the transport of equally monumental works, such as the Victory of Samothrace in 1863. Berlin's Museumsinsel project is emblematic of this phenomenon. The German Empire took a long time to form, and was unified after the war with France in 1870-1871. As the new capital, Berlin had to compete with London and Paris, capitals of the British and French colonial empires: an architectural competition was launched in 1884, to provide the city with a museum. Participants had to take into account one constraint: the Museum Island was crossed by a railroad line, the Paris-Moscow line. Between Paris and Moscow, the idea was hatched of a huge antiquities museum in Berlin, housing the artefacts unearthed by the Germans in Olympia and Pergamon - the great altar was found in 1878 - and crossed by the railway line. In this way, the German Empire signalled to travellers that, in passing through Berlin, they were passing through a modern city with new museums, but also through antiquity. The colossal museum thus had a strong geopolitical and symbolic purpose.
