Akademie der Künste (Pariser Platz 4)
Behind a vast modern glass facade on Pariser Platz stand the surviving halls of the old Prussian Academy of Arts. From 1937 these rooms were taken over by Albert Speer, Hitler's chief architect, to draft the megalomaniac plans for a Nazi world capital called Germania.
About this place
The Academy of Arts moved into the building at Pariser Platz 4 in 1907, occupying galleries built onto the older Palais Arnim. In 1937 the artists were forced out and the rooms were handed to Albert Speer, who as General Building Inspector for the capital used them to design Hitler's vision of Berlin transformed into the world capital Germania, a city of monstrous axes, a domed Great Hall and a triumphal arch dwarfing anything in Europe. Almost none of it was built, but the human cost of the planning was real, as whole districts were earmarked for demolition and forced labour was used to quarry its stone. The building burned out in 1945 and its ruins were later used as artists' studios. Today architect Günter Behnisch's transparent glass house of 2005 encloses the restored historic halls, a deliberate statement that secret plans should never again be forged here in the dark.
Key facts
- 1937 year — Albert Speer took over the academy to plan Hitler's Germania
- 290 metres — Planned height of the Great Hall dome at the heart of Germania
- 2005 year — The glass building enclosing the old halls reopened to the public
📍 Pariser Platz, 10117, Berlin