Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is the one monument that sums up Berlin's history in a single stretch of pavement: a Prussian ceremonial gate that became a Nazi backdrop, then stood for nearly three decades in the no man's land of the Berlin Wall, and is now the city's most familiar symbol of reunification. It marks the western end of the boulevard Unter den Linden, with Pariser Platz before it, the Reichstag a block to the north and the Tiergarten opening out behind it.

The present gate was built between 1788 and 1791 for King Frederick William II by the architect Carl Gotthard Langhans, on the site of an older customs gate on the road to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. Langhans modelled it on the Propylaea, the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens, making it one of the first major buildings of the Greek Revival in Germany. Twelve fluted Doric columns form five passages; originally only the royal family could use the central one. Reliefs of the labours of Hercules and battles of centaurs decorate the walls and metopes. On top, Johann Gottfried Schadow's quadriga, a goddess driving four horses in hammered copper, faces east into the city.

The quadriga has had a turbulent life. Napoleon took it to Paris in 1806; after it came back in 1814, Karl Friedrich Schinkel gave the goddess an Iron Cross and a Prussian eagle, turning a figure of peace into Victoria. The gate survived the Second World War badly damaged, and in 1956–57 East and West Berlin, despite everything, cooperated to restore it, recasting the quadriga from a plaster copy made in 1942. From August 1961 the Wall ran directly past the western side and the gate was closed. It was here that Ronald Reagan, in 1987, called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Wall, and here, on 22 December 1989, that the chancellor Helmut Kohl walked through to be greeted by the East German prime minister Hans Modrow as the crossing reopened.

After a thorough restoration completed in 2002, the gate is closed to traffic and Pariser Platz is a pedestrian square, so you can walk through the columns at any hour. Of Schadow's original quadriga, only one horse's head survived the war; it is kept in the collection of the Märkisches Museum. The space in front becomes Berlin's stage for New Year's Eve parties and big public events, so expect crowds and barriers on those dates.

Getting there

The gate is in the Mitte district of central Berlin, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße. Brandenburger Tor station, served by the S-Bahn and the U5 underground line, is right beside it. The nearest airport is Berlin Brandenburg (BER), about 19 km away.