The Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is the one image everyone carries of Berlin, and seeing it in person, at the western end of the boulevard Unter den Linden, is the natural start of any first visit. It was built between 1788 and 1791 for King Frederick William II, designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans after the gateways of the Acropolis in Athens, as a ceremonial entrance to the city. On top stands the Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses and driven by the goddess of victory, by the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow. Napoleon took the Quadriga to Paris as a trophy in 1806; it came back in triumph in 1814, when the goddess was given the Iron Cross and the Prussian eagle on her staff. Over the following two centuries, the gate became the backdrop to almost every turning point in German history: military parades, the torchlight march of the Nazis in 1933, the ruins of 1945, and then the Wall. From 1961 the gate stood inside the border strip, unreachable from both East and West, and it was here, in 1987, that Ronald Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down this wall. When the Wall opened in November 1989, crowds climbed on top of it at the gate, and the official opening of the crossing just before Christmas that year made it the symbol of German unity. Today it stands on Pariser Platz, a square lined with embassies, banks, the Academy of Arts and the Hotel Adlon, and it is free to walk through at any hour. The north wing houses a small Room of Silence for quiet reflection, and the official Berlin tourist information centre is in the south wing. A line of cobblestones on the road on the western side marks where the Wall ran.

When to go: Pariser Platz is busy from mid-morning until late evening with tour groups, street performers and photographers, so for the classic photograph without the crowd, come early in the morning, when the low sun lights the eastern facade, or late at night, when the gate is floodlit. The western side, facing the Tiergarten and the Strasse des 17. Juni, is where the big events happen, from the New Year party to concerts, marathons and fan zones, which can close the area for set-up for days, so check the city events calendar if you are visiting around New Year or a big sports tournament.

What to look for: walk through the central passage, once reserved for the royal carriage, and look up at the reliefs and the Quadriga. On Pariser Platz, the rebuilt Hotel Adlon stands on the site of the original, and the glass-fronted Academy of Arts sits among the stone embassies of the United States, France and the United Kingdom. On the west side, look down for the double row of cobbles marking the line of the Wall and walk a few minutes north to the Reichstag, or south past the Tiergarten edge to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The gate is also the start or finish of almost every walking tour of the historic centre, so a guided walk is an easy way to understand the layers of history around it.

Making a route of it: the classic walk runs east from the gate along Unter den Linden, past the State Opera, Bebelplatz, where the Nazis burned books in 1933, and Humboldt University, to the Humboldt Forum and Museum Island, roughly two kilometres of the most important architecture in the city. In the opposite direction, the Tiergarten, Berlin's great central park, begins right behind the gate, with the Victory Column at its centre. The station Brandenburger Tor on the U5 and S-Bahn is directly under Pariser Platz.