The Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Jewish Museum of Berlin), is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. The museum is located in the Kreuzberg district, not far from Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall. The Jüdisches Museum Berlin exhibits the social, political and cultural history of Jews in Germany from the 4th century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating the repercussions of the Holocaust for the first time in post-war Germany . The original Jewish museum was closed in 1938 by the Nazi regime. In the 1970s, the idea of reopening the museum began to resurface. After several years of planning and construction, the museum was officially reopened to the public in 2001. The building was designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind and has now become one of the symbols of Berlin: the guideline followed for the realization of the project is was to tell the story of the Jews, especially the Jews in Germany. The building itself can be considered a work of art. Seen from above, the museum has the shape of a zigzag line and for this reason it has been nicknamed "blitz" (lightning bolt). The shape of the building is also reminiscent of a decomposed and deconstructed Star of David. The structure is entirely covered with zinc plates and the facades are crossed by very thin and elongated windows, more like gashes or wounds than real windows, arranged randomly. The museum does not have a street entrance, but is accessed from the adjacent Berlin-Museum. The staircase that connects the two buildings leads to a basement with three paths, each of which tells the different destinies of the Jewish people: the axis of the Holocaust leads to a tower that has been left empty, called the Holocaust Tower; the axis of the Exile leads to an external square garden, called the Garden of Exile, enclosed between 49 columns; the axis of continuity, connected to the other two corridors, which represents the permanence of the Jews in Germany despite the Holocaust and the Exile. This axis leads to the main building. The entrance to the museum was intentionally made difficult and long, to instill in the visitor the feelings of challenge and difficulty that are distinctive of Jewish history.