The Neues Museum in Berlin briefly reopened earlier this month in order to showcase the 200m euro (£185m, US$250m) restoration work that has been completed over the past 10 years.

Architect David Chipperfield handed the keys to the site back to museum officials at the reopening, which lasted for a long weekend.

The museum is currently empty, and is due to reopen in October this year, when it will again house Berlin’s Egyptian collection – including the 3,300-year-old bust of queen Nefertiti – and Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History.

The museum has been closed since 1939, before the outbreak of WWII, when its contents were put into storage. The building, which was designed by Prussian architect Friedrich Stueler and originally opened in 1855, has since suffered from war damage and years of neglect.

Chipperfield’s refurbishment involved the reworking of the exhibition spaces, with modern design replacing the parts of the interior that were lost, incorporating fluted stone columns and faux-Egyptian painted ceilings that survived.