Berlin

The city’s territory also includes the Müggelsee, the Wannsee and the Grunewald. Between the built-up districts lie parks, among them the Großer Tiergarten with meadows, woodland and lakes.

Prussian residential history can be read at Charlottenburg Palace, the summer residence that was created for Queen Sophie Charlotte. Among the highlights of the Baroque state apartments in the Old Palace are the Porcelain Cabinet and the palace chapel. After severe destruction in the Second World War, the palace was largely restored. The palace garden includes a Baroque layout in the French style and a landscape garden on the English model. In the centre stands the Neoclassical Brandenburg Gate on Pariser Platz, with the Quadriga on top. After the war the damaged gate was restored and the Quadriga recast.

On Museumsinsel (Museum Island), which is surrounded by the Spree, stand the Altes Museum (‘Old Museum’) and the Neues Museum (‘New Museum’), the Alte Nationalgalerie (‘Old National Gallery’), the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum. The ensemble is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and shows the development of museum architecture. The Altes Museum by Karl Friedrich Schinkel opens with a colonnade onto the Lustgarten (‘pleasure garden’); the Alte Nationalgalerie stands as a temple-like building on a high plinth. After the war the island was a landscape of ruins; the Neues Museum, almost completely destroyed, remained a ruin for a long time and has been accessible again since 2009 after its restoration by David Chipperfield.

On the Gendarmenmarkt stand the German and the French Cathedral and Schinkel’s Schauspielhaus (‘theatre’), today the Konzerthaus (‘concert hall’). In the Second World War bombs destroyed the buildings on the square; they were later rebuilt, the interior of the Schauspielhaus being converted into a concert hall. The Reichstag building, seat of the German Bundestag, was rebuilt after the war and later remodelled by Norman Foster; in the process it received a new dome that differs from the original. The city’s history also includes its division: the Berlin Wall separated East and West Berlin until the fall of the Wall. At that time the Brandenburg Gate lay on the East Berlin side; the Wall ran west of it in an arc around the gate.

Berlin’s architecture also includes the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, which are likewise a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the Britz estate the ‘Hufeisen’ (‘horseshoe’) wraps around an Ice Age pond; the estate also includes terraced houses. In the Siemensstadt estate stand rows of blocks by several architects, following an urban-planning design by Hans Scharoun.