About this place
The Grosse Strasse was conceived as the central spine of the entire Nazi Party rally grounds, a monumental stone avenue connecting the Congress Hall at its northern end to the planned Marzfeld parade square in the south. Built between 1935 and 1939 and paved with roughly sixty thousand black and grey granite slabs, each with edges of exactly one point two metres, it was designed less as a road than as an instrument of intimidation, a surface across which the Wehrmacht was meant to march before Hitler. Its north western line was deliberately aimed at the towers of Nuremberg Castle, an attempt to bind the Third Reich to the city's medieval imperial past. The parade it was built for never took place, since the last rally was held in 1938 and war broke out the year the road was finished. After 1945 the American army used the flat expanse as a temporary airfield, and today the neighbouring exhibition centre uses it as an occasional parking area.
Key facts
- 2 kilometres — The length of the granite parade axis, running from the Congress Hall toward the planned Marzfeld
- 60000 granite slabs — Black and grey stones paving the road, much of it cut by concentration camp forced labour
- 1939 year — Completed as the Second World War began, so no army ever paraded down it
📍 Große Straße, 90471, Nürnberg