Famous Landmarks in Berlin
A capital rebuilt across three regimes, from Prussian gates to a Cold War broadcast tower.
Berlin's landmarks sit unevenly across a city rebuilt more than once. The historic core holds the neoclassical Brandenburg Gate in Mitte, the Neo-Renaissance Reichstag on the Spree's left bank in Tiergarten, and the monumental Berlin Cathedral on Museum Island, all raised during the decades when Berlin was capital first of Prussia and then of a unified German Empire. West of the centre, in Charlottenburg, a Baroque and Rococo summer palace begun as a modest country house grew across the 18th century into one of the largest in the world. Near Alexanderplatz, a broadcast tower finished in 1969 for the German Democratic Republic marks the decades when the city, and its skyline, were split in two.
Brandenburg Gate
1791 · Carl Gotthard Langhans
A neoclassical arch crowned by a bronze quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses driven by a goddess, sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow.
The current gate replaced a former city gate that had marked the start of the road from Berlin to Brandenburg an der Havel, once the seat of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. King Frederick William II of Prussia commissioned its neoclassical replacement, built between 1788 and 1791 to designs by Carl Gotthard Langhans. It stands in the Mitte district at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, facing Pariser Platz, with the Reichstag building a block to the north and the Tiergarten park beyond.
- During Berlin's Cold War division, the gate served as a checkpoint on the border between East and West Berlin.
Photo: Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Berlin TV Tower
1969 · Hermann Henselmann
The tallest structure in Germany at 368 metres, it carries an observation deck and revolving restaurant at around 203 metres and remains visible across most of the city's outer districts, standing above the surrounding rooftops.
Built between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the former German Democratic Republic, the tower served as both a working broadcast facility and a statement of communist state power. It rises next to Alexanderplatz in the Mitte district and, at 368 metres including its antenna, is the tallest structure in Germany and the third-tallest in the European Union — when finished it ranked as the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in the world, behind only the Empire State Building and the John Hancock Center. It carries radio and television transmitters alongside a public observation deck and a revolving restaurant.
- Internally it is known simply as Fernmeldeturm 32, a technical designation that gives no hint of its role as a Cold War symbol.
- It stands eight metres taller than the Trbovlje Power Station but half a metre shorter than the Riga Radio and TV Tower, making it one of the European Union's four tallest structures.
- It rises more than 220 metres higher than Berlin's older Radio Tower, built in the 1920s in the western part of the city.
Photo: Joseolgon (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Reichstag Building
1894 · Paul Wallot
A Neo-Renaissance government building on the Platz der Republik, on the river's left bank in the Tiergarten district, one block north of the Brandenburg Gate. Its 19th-century exterior survived a 1995–1999 renovation that turned it back into a working parliament.
Built between 1884 and 1894 to plans by Paul Wallot, the Neo-Renaissance building on Platz der Republik housed the legislature of the German Empire and later the Weimar Republic. A fire in 1933 gutted it, and further damage came during the Battle of Berlin in the Second World War. Standing afterward in West Berlin, unusable as a parliament for either German state, it was only partially modernised in the 1950s before Norman Foster's full redesign of 1995 to 1999 made it the seat of the reunified Bundestag.
- The 1933 fire that gutted the building helped entrench the Nazi regime, and the legislature relocated to the nearby Kroll Opera House rather than repair it.
- Because it stood in West Berlin, neither the Federal Republic nor East Germany could use the restored building as an actual seat of parliament for decades.
Photo: Jörg Braukmann (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Berlin Cathedral
1905 · Julius Carl Raschdorff
It is the largest Protestant church in Germany, standing on Museum Island at the Lustgarten. A large central Sermon Church is flanked by a smaller Baptismal and Matrimonial Church on its south side — its northern twin was demolished in 1975 — while the Hohenzollern dynastic crypt fills almost the entire basement.
Built between 1894 and 1905 to designs by Julius Raschdorff in Renaissance and Baroque Revival styles, on the order of Emperor William II, the church replaced several earlier structures on the same site, the earliest a 15th-century castle chapel for the Berlin Palace. It stands at the Lustgarten on Museum Island and doubles as a dynastic tomb for the House of Hohenzollern, one of Europe's most important. Bombing in the Second World War damaged it; the interior was restored by 2002, and restoration of the historic exterior is still under discussion.
- Its north wing, the Memorial Church, was demolished by East German authorities in 1975 and was never rebuilt.
- The Hohenzollern crypt beneath it covers almost the whole basement and ranks among Europe's most significant dynastic tombs.
Photo: Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
Charlottenburg Palace
1699 · Johann Arnold Nering
A large Baroque palace with Rococo interiors, fronted by a formal garden that runs back into woodland with a belvedere, a mausoleum, a theatre and a pavilion. Badly damaged in the Second World War, it has since been reconstructed.
The palace originated as a modest country house begun at the end of the 17th century, designed by Johann Arnold Nering, and grew over the 18th century into one of the largest palaces in the world, expanded chiefly for Frederick the Great by architects including Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff and Carl Gotthard Langhans. Its Baroque and Rococo interiors sit behind a formal garden bordered by woodland, with a belvedere, a mausoleum, a theatre and a pavilion. Severely damaged in the Second World War, the palace and its grounds have since been reconstructed.
- Though it grew into one of the largest palaces in the world, its footprint began as a comparatively modest country house.
Photo: Arek N. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Neue Nationalgalerie
1968 · Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
A steel-and-glass pavilion with a flat black roof plate 1.8 metres thick, held up by only eight cruciform columns set back from the corners so its glass walls appear almost unsupported; the exhibition hall sits three flights of steps above street level, with three-quarters of the museum's real gallery space hidden below ground.
Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1968, the museum's ground-level pavilion is a glass hall crowned by a single square black steel roof plate, held up by only eight cruciform columns set back from the corners so the glazed façade beneath a cantilever seems barely supported. Mostly an entrance and special-exhibition space, this hall sits above three-quarters of the museum, including the permanent collection, library and offices, below ground. The design grew out of an unbuilt office project for a Cuban rum company. Renovated by David Chipperfield, the museum closed in 2015 and reopened in 2021.
- Mies originally conceived the entrance hall for very large artworks, imagining a work such as Picasso's Guernica as an element of the space itself.
- He later refused to redesign the half-buried lower level, arguing it would ruin the proportions of the pavilion above, which he considered a modern temple.
- The entrance pavilion's polished granite floor reflects so much light that it made curating exhibitions notoriously difficult.
Photo: abbilder (CC BY 4.0)
New Synagogue
1859–1866 · Eduard Knoblauch
The surviving reconstruction is essentially a street-facing shell: a polychrome brick façade with sculpted terracotta and coloured glazed brick leads to an entrance beneath a central gilded-ribbed dome flanked by two smaller pavilion domes, but the deep prayer hall that once stood behind it, seating 3,000, was never rebuilt.
Eduard Knoblauch designed this synagogue, built between 1859 and its inauguration in 1866 in the presence of Count Otto von Bismarck; after Knoblauch's death in 1865, Friedrich August Stüler completed construction. Its Moorish style, recalling the Alhambra, made it Germany's largest synagogue, seating 3,000. It survived Kristallnacht in 1938, when a police officer drove off arsonists, but Allied bombing during 1943-44 gutted the building and much was later demolished. What stands today reconstructs only the ruined street frontage, entrance, dome and towers, stopping short of where the original prayer hall began.
- The synagogue hosted a public violin concert by Albert Einstein in 1930.
- The main prayer hall was seized by the German Army in 1940 and used to store military uniforms.
- Because Nazi law barred Jewish musicians from ordinary concert halls, synagogues including this one hosted permitted performances of Jewish works, among them a 1938 staging of the first opera on Hebrew themes.
Photo: Rohieb (CC BY-SA 3.0)
History
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin became the seat of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, then capital of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 and of the German Empire after 1871. Prussian rulers built outward from the centre: Frederick William II raised the Brandenburg Gate in 1791 on the site of an older city gate, while Charlottenburg Palace, begun as a country house at the end of the 17th century, was enlarged over the following century for Frederick the Great. Imperial ambition produced the Reichstag, completed in 1894, and Berlin Cathedral, finished in 1905 for Emperor William II. Fire and two world wars damaged much of this fabric, and after 1945 the divided city rebuilt unevenly: East Germany raised the television tower near Alexanderplatz in 1969, while the Reichstag waited until 1999, after reunification, for its own rebuilding.