Brandenburg Gate

Six horses, twelve crates, six huge wagons each pulled by thirty-two horses: that is what it took to move the Brandenburg Gate’s Quadriga from Paris back to Berlin in 1814. Do the arithmetic and you get 192 horses hauling a looted bronze chariot across Europe because a Prussian general had outwitted Napoleon. The gate itself was already twenty-three years old by then. It had been built as a symbol of peace, and from almost the first moment it opened it has been used as a symbol of everything else.

That gap between intention and use is what makes the Brandenburg Gate worth more than the two minutes most tour groups give it. Stand in front of it before the coaches arrive, when the pre-dawn light is still blue and the stone looks almost grey, and you can feel the whole weight of German history pressing through those five passageways. This is where Napoleon rode through in triumph. Where Hitler paraded. Where Reagan stood behind bulletproof glass and dared a Soviet premier to knock down a wall. Where 100,000 people wept and cheered on a cold December night in 1989. A gate is usually an entrance. This one has spent two centuries as a stage.

The Gate Itself

Carl Gotthard Langhans completed the gate in 1791, modelling it on the Propylaea in Athens. It stands 26 metres tall and 65 metres wide, with five passageways divided by twelve Doric columns. The neoclassical proportions are deliberately sober. Langhans was not building a triumphal arch; he was building a city gate for the Prussian capital, and the restraint shows. What he could not have anticipated was the Quadriga that Johann Gottfried Schadow added to the top two years later in 1793: a goddess driving a four-horse chariot, originally representing Eirene, the goddess of peace, facing east toward the city.

The Quadriga’s history is a compressed version of Prussian and German history. Napoleon took it to Paris in 1807 after defeating the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt, packing the bronze apart in twelve crates. It sat in French storage, apparently forgotten, until his defeat. When General Ernst von Pfuel oversaw its return in 1814, the Prussians modified it: the laurel wreath of peace was replaced with a Prussian eagle and an iron cross. The peace goddess became Victoria, goddess of victory, and her chariot was turned to face west, toward Prussia’s neighbors. The original bronze was damaged badly in World War II bombing; what you see today is a reconstruction completed in the 1950s and substantially updated in the 1990s.

One detail almost no guide mentions: for over a century after 1814, ordinary Berliners were barred from the central archway. It was reserved exclusively for the royal family. The only exception was the Pfuel family, who received the honor by royal decree in permanent gratitude for Ernst von Pfuel’s role in recovering the Quadriga. Ambassadors could use it once, on the single occasion of presenting their letters of credence. Everyone else used the outer passageways. The democratic use of all five arches, taken for granted by today’s selfie-taking crowds, only became the norm in 1919 with the end of the Hohenzollern monarchy.

The Death Strip Years

Between 1961 and 1989, the Brandenburg Gate stood in no-man’s-land. It was accessible from neither side. The Berlin Wall ran just behind it on the east, sealing the gate inside the death strip between East and West. From the western side, visitors could climb viewing platforms to look at it from a distance, like a monument in a locked museum. East Berliners could not approach it at all.

Reagan gave his “tear down this wall” speech here on June 12, 1987. He stood about 100 metres from the wall itself, shielded from the east by two panels of bulletproof glass, with West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and West Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen behind him. When he delivered the line “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” the reaction was muted. The American press gave it limited coverage. East Germany’s state media dismissed it as the ravings of a cold warrior. Soviet news agency TASS called it “openly provocative.” The speech was written by Peter Robinson after a Berlin woman told him, bluntly, that everyone in the city wanted the wall gone. Reagan’s senior advisers, including Colin Powell, argued the line should be cut because it sounded too extreme. Reagan kept it anyway.

Two and a half years later, the wall fell. But the gate itself did not open on the night of November 9, 1989, which is the date usually associated with the wall’s fall. The gate remained closed. It did not open until December 22, 1989, when workers punched through the wall just after midnight on that morning. West German police and East German border guards shook hands through the gap. Later that day, Chancellor Kohl walked through the central arch, which had last been used by emperors, to meet East German prime minister Hans Modrow. More than 100,000 people stood in the rain on both sides and applauded. The reunification of Germany followed 339 days later on October 3, 1990.

The Gate Information Centre

The south guardhouse contains a small permanent exhibition on the gate’s history, with a particular focus on the Cold War period. It is free to enter. The exhibition is worth twenty minutes if you want the wall-era photographs in context, though the building’s modest size means it can feel cramped when tour groups pass through. Go early or skip it until the afternoon crowds thin out.

What to See Around It

The gate anchors one end of Pariser Platz, a formal square that was completely destroyed in the war and rebuilt after reunification. The Hotel Adlon stands on the northeast corner, one of Berlin’s great pre-war grand hotels, rebuilt in 1997. Embassies and the Academy of Arts occupy the other edges. The square itself is pleasant to cross but has the slightly artificial quality of all post-reunification reconstruction: correct in proportion, a little scrubbed of age.

The Holocaust Memorial is five minutes’ walk south down Hannah-Arendt-Strasse. The official name is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and getting that name right matters. The 2,711 grey concrete stelae, designed by Peter Eisenman and opened in 2005, occupy 1.9 hectares. The stelae range in height from 20 centimetres to 4.7 metres, and the ground undulates beneath them so that as you walk deeper into the grid, the blocks rise around you and the outside world drops away. Many visitors walk in a few rows and turn back. The more useful visit is to keep going, to lose sight of the edges, and to sit with what that feels like.

Below the memorial, entered from the northeast corner, is the underground Information Centre. Admission is free. Four rooms deal with specific aspects of the Holocaust through individual testimony: the Room of Dimensions covers the scale of the murders; the Room of Families presents individual family stories; the Room of Names reads out the names of identified victims (it would take six years and seven months to read them all at the current pace); the Room of Sites maps the geography of the killing. The above-ground field of grey concrete is striking. The information centre below it is where the visit becomes something that stays with you.

The Reichstag Building is a seven-minute walk north, crossing the Platz der Republik. Norman Foster’s glass dome, added in the 1990s restoration, is open to visitors and free, but requires pre-booking through bundestag.de. The booking system operates on a rolling window covering the current month and the following month, and popular slots on summer weekends fill within hours of becoming available. Book two to three months ahead if you can, or check daily for cancellations. Walk-in registration is possible at the visitor service centre near the building if spots remain, but that requires arriving at least two hours before your intended visit time with no guarantee of a place. The dome itself is a double helix of ramps spiraling up through the interior, with a central mirrored cone that channels daylight down into the Bundestag chamber below. The views are good; the chance to look down into the parliament while it is in session is better.

Unter den Linden runs east from the gate for 1.5 kilometres to Museum Island, with a broad central promenade lined by the linden trees that give it its name. The walk takes about 20 minutes without stopping, longer with distractions. Neue Wache appears on the left, a neoclassical guardhouse now serving as Germany’s central memorial to victims of war and tyranny, worth entering for the stark Käthe Kollwitz sculpture under its open oculus. Bebelplatz, further along on the right, has a glass panel set into the pavement with empty white bookshelves visible below it, a memorial to the Nazi book burning that took place there on May 10, 1933. The surrounding buildings include the State Opera, St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, and the former Royal Library. Bus 100, the city’s unofficial budget sightseeing route, runs the full length of Unter den Linden if your feet give out.

The Tiergarten begins immediately west of the gate. It is a proper city park: 210 hectares of old-growth woodland, wide paths, cycling routes, and in summer, bare skin on every available patch of grass. The Victory Column stands about 30 minutes’ walk from the gate at the park’s center, with an elevator to the observation platform at 51 metres. On hot days, the park is where Berliners actually go; the tourists stay at the gate.

New Year’s Eve

The gate hosts Berlin’s main New Year’s Eve party, branded annually with a different slogan. It draws massive crowds and is ticketed: roughly 20,000 free tickets are released in December through visitBerlin.de, and they go quickly. The event runs from 10pm with DJ sets through midnight, when a fireworks display fires for about seven and a half minutes. The party is broadcast live on national television. It is worth noting that the U-Bahn stops running to Brandenburger Tor station from around 4pm on December 31 due to the crowds, so plan transit accordingly, S-Bahn lines run through the night at 20-minute intervals.

Getting There

The S-Bahn station Brandenburger Tor (S1, S2, S25) sits directly below Pariser Platz and brings you up into the square. The U-Bahn does not reach the gate directly; the nearest U-Bahn stop is Bundestag on the U5, about a 10-minute walk north. From Berlin Hauptbahnhof it is a 15-minute walk or two stops on the S-Bahn.

The Berlin AB day pass costs around 11 euros (the exact price has shifted with recent fare increases, so check bvg.de before you travel) and covers all S-Bahn, U-Bahn, trams, buses, and ferries within the city boundaries. It is valid for 24 hours from first validation. If you are doing the gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, and Unter den Linden in a single day, which is achievable and not rushed, the day pass pays for itself before lunch.

Where to Eat

The immediate surroundings of the gate are sparse for eating. Pariser Platz restaurants are expensive and mediocre in the way that any restaurant next to a famous landmark tends to be. Walk instead.

Zollpackhof, a ten-minute walk west along the Spree toward the Chancellery, is a Bavarian beer garden and restaurant that has operated in some form on this site since 1700. It serves Augustiner beer from Munich (one of the few Berlin establishments that does) alongside schnitzel, hocks, Weisswurst, and tarte flambee. Lunch plates are around 14 euros. The beer garden opens in warm weather and the interior is a proper wood-panelled room rather than a tourist approximation of one. It draws federal government workers from the nearby ministries, which is a reliable sign of quality and value.

Schwarzwaldstuben in Mitte serves food from the Black Forest: Maultaschen (a pasta parcel like a large ravioli, the Swabian comfort food), Flammkuchen (a flat tarte flambee), and Spaetzle alongside the obligatory schnitzel. It is a 15-minute walk from the gate and crowded enough at dinner to suggest it is not purely a tourist operation.

For the genuine Berlin working-class experience, Mustafa’s Gemuse Kebap on Mehringdamm in Kreuzberg requires a U-Bahn journey south of the center, and then a queue. The vegetable doner, with grilled vegetables, sheep’s cheese, and a yogurt dressing, has acquired something approaching cult status, and the queue at lunch can stretch 45 minutes. Whether it is worth it depends entirely on your tolerance for queuing. It is very good. It is not transcendent. But Kreuzberg in general is worth the trip, and the kebap gives you a reason to go.

Zur letzten Instanz on Waisenstrasse near Alexanderplatz claims 1621 as its founding date, making it one of Berlin’s oldest continuously operating restaurants. It has served Napoleon (possibly), and definitely served a long succession of working Berliners. The menu is traditional German: pork knuckle, sauerkraut, bread soup. The setting is a warren of low-ceilinged rooms with vaulted brick. It is exactly the kind of place that could easily become a tourist cliche but has survived on consistency and reasonable prices.

Where to Stay

The Mitte district puts you within walking distance of the gate, Unter den Linden, the Holocaust Memorial, and Museum Island. It is also the most expensive part of the city. If budget is not a constraint, the Hotel Adlon Kempinski on Pariser Platz puts you directly adjacent to the gate; the rooms facing west look at the gate through their windows. The price is what you would expect from a hotel in that position.

At the mid-range, hotels along or near Unter den Linden offer a better balance. Martas Hotel Berlin Mitte is a reliable option with straightforward rooms within walking distance of Hackescher Markt and the gate. The AMANO Grand Central near Hauptbahnhof is clean, well-run, and positioned between the gate and the train station, which simplifies arrival and departure logistics.

For budget, Berlin’s B&B Hotel chain runs a Mitte location near Friedrichstrasse that is about as honest a value proposition as the city offers: small rooms, no frills, reliable cleanliness, walking distance from most of central Berlin’s sights. Friedrichstrasse station itself is a transit hub with direct S-Bahn connections across the city.

If you are willing to be 20 minutes from the gate by S-Bahn, Prenzlauer Berg to the northeast is a better neighborhood for actually living in Berlin for a few days. It has coffee shops, bakeries, Sunday markets, and fewer souvenir stalls. The tradeoff is slightly longer journeys to the main sights, which in practice means one more S-Bahn stop.

When to Go

The gate is open and free at every hour of the day and night, every day of the year. The Quadriga is lit after dark, and the gate from the west in artificial light is a completely different object than the same gate in full afternoon sun. The best photographs are taken from the east (the Pariser Platz side) at dawn, when the sun rises behind you and the gate catches the low light. By 9am on a summer morning, tour groups are already forming in the square. By 10am, the terrace in front of the gate is dense with people.

The second-best window is after 9pm, when the crowds thin and the illumination takes over. Bring a tripod; there are no restrictions on using one, and there is very little car traffic near the gate to deal with.

The gate faces east-west almost exactly, which means the sunrise framing through the central arch is available in the morning and a version of the same effect, softer and less dramatic, appears at sunset. Spring and autumn give you more interesting skies than summer’s flat brightness.

One Thing to Notice

Walk through the central arch. Stand in it for a moment. For 105 years, from 1814 to 1919, ordinary people were barred from using it. The royal family went through the middle; everyone else used the flanking passages. When the Weimar Republic abolished that privilege, it did so quietly, without ceremony. Now anyone can walk through, and almost everyone does, taking photographs, barely pausing. It is worth pausing. The arch is wide enough to feel like a room, and the acoustics change slightly when you are inside it.

That detail, the forbidden arch, the 192 horses, the gate facing east in peacetime and west as a military threat, the bulletproof glass in 1987 and the 100,000 people in the rain two years later, is why the Brandenburg Gate repays more than two minutes. The stone has not changed since 1791. Everything around it has changed completely, repeatedly, and often violently. The gate is what remained.

Come before the coaches. Stay longer than you planned.