In the seventeenth century, princess Louise, daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm - also known as The Great Elector - built a beautiful pleasure garden on the tip of an island on the River Spree. Many years later, when one of his descendants ruled over Prussia, the need arose for a museum to house many of Germany's treasures, which had recently been recovered from France. Thus, in the 1820s, Berlin's great architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel devised a plan for a new museum bordering the garden. Built between 1825 and 1830, the Altes Museum was the first in the city, fashioned in the Greek style. It was situated across the garden from the King's Palace, which was demolished World War II.After the war, the Altes Museum was the first of the group museums on Museum Island to be renovated and it reopened in 1966. Today, it houses the Antikensammlung (Museum of Antiquities) on its main floor. The permanent collection here includes a vast variety of ancient Greek and Roman decorative art including vases and statues.