Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is the emblem of the old West Berlin, and one of the most moving sights in the city. The original church was commissioned by Emperor Wilhelm II in honour of his grandfather, Wilhelm I, and built in a neo-Romanesque style by Franz Schwechten between 1891 and 1895, at a time when the new western districts around the Kurfuerstendamm were becoming the fashionable heart of the capital. In 1943 Allied bombing badly damaged it; the top of the main tower broke off and the roof collapsed. After the war, plans to demolish the ruin in the 1950s provoked a public outcry, and the architect Egon Eiermann found a compromise: he kept the broken west tower as a memorial and built a new ensemble around it between 1959 and 1961. Berliners quickly nicknamed the ruined tower the hollow tooth. Eiermann's new church is an octagon of concrete honeycomb walls filled with thousands of small glass blocks, mostly deep blue, which turn the interior into a calm, glowing space; a large gilded figure of Christ hangs above the altar, and the effect, especially on a grey day, is unforgettable. A separate hexagonal bell tower and a small chapel complete the group. Inside the old tower, the Memorial Hall keeps the surviving mosaics and reliefs of the original church, photographs of its destruction and a place of remembrance against war, including the Cross of Nails from Coventry Cathedral, which was itself bombed in 1940, a symbol of reconciliation shared with Dresden, Hiroshima and Volgograd. The church stands on Breitscheidplatz at the top of the Kurfuerstendamm, opposite Zoo station, and admission is free.

How to plan your visit: the church and the Memorial Hall are generally open daily from 10am to 6pm, and there is no admission charge, though donations are welcome. Services, prayers and concerts take place regularly, including a Friday lunchtime prayer of reconciliation at the Cross of Nails and Saturday evening vespers, so be quiet during services and check the parish website for events. The whole ensemble is in a long programme of renovation that is planned to run until 2029, so scaffolding may cover parts of it during your visit. Allow around thirty to forty-five minutes.

Getting the most from it: start in the Memorial Hall in the old tower, where the fragments of the original decoration and the before-and-after photographs explain the story, then cross to the new church and sit for a few minutes to let the blue light take effect. Go back in the late afternoon if you can, when the low sun intensifies the colour of the glass. If you are interested in architecture, look closely at how Eiermann's slender modern buildings frame the ruin without competing with it. In the weeks before Christmas, Breitscheidplatz hosts one of the city's best-known Christmas markets around the church. On the steps leading up to the church, a memorial with the names of the victims and a crack filled with gold in the ground commemorates the people killed in the terrorist attack on that market in December 2016, and many visitors stop there for a moment.

Who it suits and what to pair it with: first-time visitors who want to see the heart of City West, history buffs interested in the war and the postwar city, and couples looking for a quiet, beautiful space in the middle of a busy shopping district. It takes only a short time, so it pairs naturally with other sights: Zoo Berlin and the Aquarium are across the road, the Kurfuerstendamm and the KaDeWe department store are a short walk away, and the Tiergarten and the Victory Column are within easy reach on foot or by bus.