Berlin

Berlin Cathedral

Berlin Cathedral (German: Berliner Dom) is the short name for the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church (German: Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin) in Berlin, Germany. It is located on Museum Island in the Mitte borough. The current building was finished in 1905 and is a main work of Historicist architecture of the "Kaiserzeit". The Dom is the parish church of the congregation Gemeinde der Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin, a member of the umbrella organisation Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia. The Berlin Cathedral has never been a cathedral in the actual sense of that term since it has never been the seat of a bishop. The bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg (under this name 1945–2003) is based at St. Mary's Church and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.

Berlin City Palace

The Berlin Palace (German: Berliner Schloss or Stadtschloss), also known as the Berlin City Palace, is a building in the centre of Berlin, located on the Museum Island at Schlossplatz, opposite the Lustgarten park. It was a royal and imperial palace and served as the winter residence of the Electors of Brandenburg, the Kings of Prussia and the German Emperors. Destroyed by the East German communist regime in the 1950s, the palace is currently being rebuilt, with completion expected in 2018. The reconstructed palace will be the seat of the Humboldt Forum, a museum for world culture which is a successor museum of the Ancient Prussian Art Chamber, which was also located in the Berlin Palace. The Humboldt Forum has been described as the German equivalent of the British Museum.The palace was originally built in the 15th century and changed throughout the next few centuries. It bore features of the Baroque style, and its shape, finalised by the middle 18th century, is attributed to German architect Andreas Schlüter, whose first design is likely to date from 1702, though the palace incorporated earlier parts seen in 1688 by Nicodemus Tessin. It served as a residence to various Electors of Brandenburg. It was the principal residence and winter residence of the Hohenzollern Kings of Prussia from 1701 to 1918. After the unification of Germany in 1871, it was also the central residence for the German Emperors. It became a museum following the fall of the German Empire in 1918. The palace was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II. Although it could have been repaired, the palace was demolished in 1950 by the German Democratic Republic authorities, despite criticism. In the 1970s, the Palace of the Republic was constructed in its place, which was demolished in 2008. Following the reunification of Germany, it was decided to rebuild the entire exterior of the palace in the original style except for one side. The new building will have the cubature of the former palace and include authentically reconstructed facades on three of the four exterior sides of the building. The interior will be modern, but the facades of one of the courts will be in the original style (Schlüterhof). However, the floorplan has been designed to allow potential future reconstruction of notable historical rooms. The building will house the Humboldtforum museum and congress complex, and is scheduled to be finished 14 September 2019.

St. Nicholas Church

The St. Nikolai-Kirche, is the oldest church in Berlin, the capital of Germany. The church is located in the eastern part of central Berlin, the borough of Mitte. The area around the church, bounded by Spandauer Straße, Rathausstraße, the River Spree and Mühlendamm, is known as the Nikolaiviertel 'Nicholas quarter', and is an area of restored mediaeval buildings . The church was built between 1220 and 1230, and is thus, along with the Church of Our Lady at Alexanderplatz not far away, the oldest church in Berlin.

Television Tower

The Fernsehturm (English: Television Tower) is a television tower in central Berlin, Germany. Close to Alexanderplatz in Berlin-Mitte, the tower was constructed between 1965-69 by the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was intended to be both a symbol of Communist power and of Berlin. It remains the latter today, as it is easily visible throughout the central and some suburban districts of Berlin. With its height of 368 metres (including antenna) it is the tallest structure in Germany, and the second-tallest structure in the European Union. Of three tallest structures in Europe, it is 0.5m shorter than the Riga Radio and TV Tower, and 8m taller than the Trbovlje Power Station in 2017. The structure is also more than 220 meters higher than the old Berlin Radio Tower in the western part of the city, which was built in the 1920s. In addition to its main function as the location of several radio and television broadcasting stations, the building – internally known as "Fernmeldeturm 32" – serves as a viewing tower with observation deck including a bar at a height of 203 metres, as well as a rotating restaurant. Also, the Berlin TV Tower can be booked as a venue for events. The distinctive city landmark has undergone a radical, symbolic transformation: After German reunification, it changed from a politically charged, national symbol of the GDR into a citywide symbol of a reunited Berlin. Due to its universal and timeless design, it has increasingly been used as a trademark and is identified worldwide with Berlin and Germany. In 1979, the Berlin TV Tower received monument status by the GDR, a status which was perpetuated after the German reunification.The tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of the country and is often in the establishing shot of films set in Berlin, alongside monuments such as the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Victory Column and the Reichstag building. It is also one of the ten most popular attractions in Germany with more than 1,000,000 visitors every year. Due to its location near Alexanderplatz, it is occasionally called Alex Tower.

Alexanderplatz

Alexanderplatz (German: [ʔalɛkˈsandɐˌplats] ( listen)) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin, near the Fernsehturm. Berliners often call it simply Alex, referring to a larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the northeast to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the southwest.

Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum (German: Pergamonmuseum) is situated on the Museum Island in Berlin. The building was designed by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann and was constructed over a period of twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. The Pergamon Museum houses monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, the Market Gate of Miletus reconstructed from the ruins found in Anatolia, as well as the Mshatta Facade. The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. It is visited by approximately 1,135,000 people every year, making it the most visited art museum in Germany (2007), and is one of the largest in the country.

Gendarmenmarkt

The Gendarmenmarkt is a square in Berlin and the site of an architectural ensemble including the Konzerthaus (concert hall) and the French and German Churches. In the centre of the square stands a monumental statue of Germany's renowned poet Friedrich Schiller. The square was created by Johann Arnold Nering at the end of the seventeenth century as the Linden-Markt and reconstructed by Georg Christian Unger in 1773. The Gendarmenmarkt is named after the cuirassier regiment Gens d'Armes, which had stables at the square until 1773. During World War II, most of the buildings were badly damaged or destroyed. Today all of them have been restored.

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991). East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration and defection westward through the Soviet border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin.

Berlin Wall Remains

Topography of Terror

Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz (German: [ˈpɔtsdamɐ plats] ( listen), literally Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km (1,100 yd) south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km (16 mi) to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate. After developing within the space of little over a century from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe, it was totally laid to waste during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects.

Sony Center

The Sony Center is a Sony-sponsored building complex located at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany desiged by Helmut Jahn. It opened in 2000 and houses Sony's German headquarters.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000 m2 (4.7-acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 m (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.Building began on April 1, 2003, and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million.

Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after the (temporarily) successful restoration of order during the early Batavian Revolution. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which used to be capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament (Bundestag). The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs. Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

DZ Bank

DZ Bank AG is the second largest bank in Germany by asset size and the central institution for more than 1,000 co-operative banks and their 12,000 branch offices. Within the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken Co-operative financial network, which is one of Germany's largest private sector financial service organisations, DZ Bank functions both as a central institution and as a corporate and investment bank. DZ Bank is an acronym for Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank (literally "German Central Co-operative Bank"). As a holding, the DZ Bank Group defines itself primarily as a service provider for the local cooperative banks and their 30 million or so clients. The DZ Bank Group includes DVB Bank, a transportation finance bank; Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall, a building society; DG HYP, a provider of commercial real estate finance; DZ Privatbank Gruppe; R+V Versicherung, an insurance company; TeamBank, a provider of consumer finance; Union Investment Group, an asset management company; VR Leasing; and various other specialized institutions. DZ Bank is a member of CIBP, EACB, the Euro Banking Association and Unico. DZ Bank is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and maintains branches, subsidiaries and representative offices in key financial centers and economic regions worldwide. The DZ Bank building in Berlin, located at Pariser Platz 3, was designed by architect Frank Gehry. DZ Bank also has one of the most significant collections of contemporary artistic photography which today comprises over 6,000 works by more than 550 artists. In 2016 DZ Bank was merged with WGZ Bank, the central institute of the co-operative banks of Rhineland and Westphalia.

Reichstag building

The Reichstag (German: Reichstagsgebäude pronounced [ˈʁaɪçstaːksgəˈbɔʏdə]; officially: Deutscher Bundestag - Plenarbereich Reichstagsgebäude pronounced [ ˈdɔʏtʃɐ ˈbʊndəsˌtaːk ˈpleːnaːrbəraɪç ˈʁaɪçstaːksgəˈbɔʏdə]) is a historic edifice in Berlin, Germany, constructed to house the Imperial Diet (German: Reichstag) of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Diet until 1933, when it was severely damaged after being set on fire. After World War II, the building fell into disuse; the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (the Volkskammer) met in the Palast der Republik in East Berlin, while the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (the Bundestag) met in the Bundeshaus in Bonn. The ruined building was made safe against the elements and partially refurbished in the 1960s, but no attempt at full restoration was made until after German reunification on 3 October 1990, when it underwent a reconstruction led by architect Norman Foster. After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament: the modern Bundestag. The term Reichstag, when used to connote a diet, dates back to the Holy Roman Empire. The building was built for the Diet of the German Empire, which was succeeded by the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. The latter would become the Reichstag of Nazi Germany, which left the building (and ceased to act as a parliament) after the 1933 fire and never returned; the term Reichstag has not been used by German parliaments since World War II. In today's usage, the word Reichstag (Imperial Diet Building) refers mainly to the building, while Bundestag (Federal Diet) refers to the institution.

Soviet War Memorial Tiergarten