Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I.M. Pei Bau
he eye-catching swirling glass building behind the Zeughaus is the work of American-
Chinese architect
I.M. Pei
- most famous for his glass pyramid at the entrance to the
Louvre in Paris. Pei's hallmark geometric glass is here too, with the resulting play of
light perhaps the most important factor in making the building work. Temporary
exhibitions here usually delve into German social history in the last couple of centuries,
and vary widely, though all seem to share first-class displays and even-handedness in
the treatment of what are often subject matters.
1
Neue Wache
Karl Friedrich Schinkel's most celebrated surviving creation, the Neoclassical
Neue
Wache
, is on Unter den Linden beside the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Built
between 1816 and 1818 as a guardhouse for the royal watch, it resembles a stylized
Roman temple and served as a sort of police station until 1918. In 1930-31 it was
converted into a memorial to the military dead of World War I, and in 1957 the GDR
extended the concept to include those killed by Nazis: as a “Memorial to the Victims
of Fascism and Militarism”. Until 1990 one of East Berlin's most ironic ceremonies
was played out in front of the Neue Wache - the regular changing of the Nationale
Volksarmee (National People's Army - the GDR army) honour guard, a much-
photographed goose-stepping ritual that ended with the demise of the East German
state. hese days it serves as the “National Memorial to the Victims of War and
Tyranny”, and inside a granite slab covers the tombs of an unknown soldier and an
unknown concentration camp victim. At the head of this memorial stone is a statue,
depicting a mother clutching her dying son, an enlargement of a small sculpture by
Käthe Kollwitz (see p.112).
Palais am Festungsgrab
he grand-looking building behind the Neue Wache, the
Palais am Festungsgrab
has had a chequered career. Built during the eighteenth century as a palace for a
royal gentleman of the bedchamber, it later served as a residence for Prussian
finance ministers, and during GDR days it was the Zentrale Haus der Deutsch-
Sowjetischen Freundschaft or “Central House of German-Soviet Friendship”.
Today it houses the
Theater im Palais
(see p.220). West beside the
Palais
, the
Maxim-Gorki-Theater
(see p.220) is a one-time singing academy converted into
a theatre after World War II.
Gendarmenmarkt
A five-minute walk south of Unter Den Linden brings you to the immaculately
restored
Gendarmenmarkt
square, one of the Berlin's architectural highlights -
it's hard to imagine that all its buildings were almost obliterated during the war
and that rebuilding lasted until well into the 1980s. he Gendarmenmarkt's
origins
are prosaic. It was originally home to Berlin's main market until the
Gendarme regiment set up their stables on the site in 1736 and gave the square
its name. With the departure of the military, the Gendarmenmarkt was transformed
at the behest of Frederick the Great, who ordered an architectural revamp of its
two churches - the
Französischer Dom
and
Deutscher Dom
- in an attempt to
mimic the Piazza del Popolo in Rome. he surrounding grid-like streets are
testament to the area's seventeenth-century origins, when this pattern of building
was the norm, and when a number of city extensions took Berlin beyond its
original walled core. his area, once known as Friedrichstadt, became a Huguenot
stronghold thanks to Prussian guarantees of religious freedom and rights that
attracted them in numbers.
