Brandenburg Gate

In 1806, Napoleon rode through the Brandenburg Gate on a horse after defeating Prussian forces at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. He took the Quadriga (the gilded four-horse chariot on top of the gate) back to Paris as a trophy. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the sculpture was returned and the crown of oak leaves on the goddess of victory was replaced with an iron cross: the French had removed it, the Prussians put something more militaristic back. The gate completed in 1791 as a symbol of peace has spent most of its history being used as a backdrop to the opposite.

The Gate

The Brandenburg Gate stands at the western end of Unter den Linden at Pariser Platz. It is 26 metres tall, five passage-ways wide, and built in the Doric neoclassical style by Carl Gotthard Langhans. Free to visit at any hour. The Gate Information Centre (in the south guardhouse) provides historical context including the Cold War division when the gate stood in no-man’s land between East and West Berlin.

The Quadriga atop the gate: the original bronze chariot and horses were cast in 1793. During World War II bombing they were severely damaged; the current versions are reconstructions completed in the 1950s and updated in the 1990s.

What to See Around It

The Holocaust Memorial (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) is five minutes’ walk south: 2,711 grey concrete slabs in a grid that visitors walk through. The underground information centre below the memorial is essential context that the stelae alone don’t provide.

The Reichstag Building a few minutes north has Norman Foster’s glass dome open to visitors with pre-booked entry (free, book weeks ahead at bundestag.de). The dome gives panoramic city views and the interior allows you to look down into the Bundestag chamber.

Tiergarten, the large central park immediately west of the gate, is worth at least an afternoon; the Victory Column at its centre (30 minutes walk from the gate) has an elevator and observation platform.

Eating in Berlin

Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebap on Mehringdamm in Kreuzberg: the queue is real, the vegetable kebap is genuinely worth it. Zur letzten Instanz on Waisenstrasse is one of Berlin’s oldest restaurants (1621), doing traditional German food in a setting that has survived several centuries of the city’s history.