About this place
Completed in 1791 to designs by Carl Gotthard Langhans, the Brandenburg Gate was conceived as a gate of peace, its twelve sandstone columns echoing the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the Nazis seized this potent symbol for their own ends. That very night tens of thousands of SA and SS men marched through its central passage in a torchlit procession, and in the years that followed the gate was draped in swastika banners for the regime's mass spectacles. By the spring of 1945 the propaganda had given way to ruin. As the Red Army fought its way into the government quarter, the gate was struck by hundreds of artillery rounds, its columns pocked with shrapnel and the Quadriga above almost entirely destroyed. When the guns fell silent, only a single horse's head survived of Schadow's chariot, and Soviet soldiers raised their flag before the shattered monument.
Key facts
- 1791 year — Completed to designs by architect Carl Gotthard Langhans as a gate of peace
- 60000 marchers — SA and SS men paraded through the gate by torchlight on 30 January 1933
- 300 impacts — Artillery and shell strikes the gate endured during the Battle of Berlin in 1945
📍 Pariser Platz 1, 10117, Berlin