Getting there

S-Bahn

S1, S2, S25 to Unter den Linden

S3, S5, S7,S75,  S9 to Friedrichstraße and then walk to Unter den Linden

U-Bahn

U6 to Französische Straße or Friedrichstraße and then walk to Unter den Linden

Related / near by

• 15 minutes to walk to Potsdamer Platz
• Tiergarten
• Government District with Reichstag
• 25 minutes to Gendarmenmarkt
• Unter den Linden ends there
• 20 minutes to Museumsinsel
• 10 Minutes to Friedrichstraße

Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor)

Pariser Platz is situated at the end of the boulevard of Unter den Linden and once also was the end of the city. It was created 1732-34 when the area of Berlin was extended and got it's name in 1814 due conquest of Paris by prussian and allied troops.

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate)

... place of revolutions, torchlight processions, demonstrations. Symbol of Prussia. Symbol of the devided Berlin as it stood on the no-man's-land between the two cities of Est- and West-Berlin. Symbol of the falling wall on November 9th 1989, when people where celebrating there on the wall. The Brandenburger Tor - symbol of a reunited city, a reunited country, situated right at the center of it's capitol.

The gate was built during 1789 to 1791 by Carl Gotthard Langhans as Berlin's first neoclassical monument. Standing at the end of Unter den Linden, it replaced the old town gate, which was not beautiful enough for a road that led directly to the residence of Friedrich Wilhelm II.

The Quadriga was put on it's top in summer of 1793. The figure was designed by Johann Gottfried Schadow and consists the greek goddes Eirene (goddes of peace and daughter of Zeus), standing on a cart which is pulled by four horses. She looks over Unter den Linden to the east, the center of Berlin.

After Napoleon conquered Berlin, the Quadriga was taken to Paris in 1806 and shown in the Louvre as a sign the victory Prussia. After the victorious liberation wars against Napoleon, it was brought back in 1814. Now the goddess of peace became the goddes of victory - Victoria. She received the laurel wreath, the Prussian eagle and the iron cross designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a sign of victory.

During the Nazi period the gate and the street Unter den Linden where used for processions to show the power of Germany.

After World War II the gate was reconstructed under the administrations of East- (the gate itself) and West-Berlin (the Quadriga). On August 13th 1961 the gate was closed. The Wall was built. The area around the Brandenburger Tor became no-man's-land for 28 years.

November 9th, 1989: The end of the GDR begins, people are are celebrating standing on the wall. On December 22 the gate was reopened. Today, only pedestrians are allowed to cross the gate.

Platz des 18. März

Platz des 18. März (Place of March 18th) - On March 18th 2000 the Platz vor dem Brandenburger Tor ( place in front of the Brandenburg Gate), place at the west side of the Brandenburger Tor, was renamed to Platz des 18. März. This is in memory of the March-Revolution of 1848 as well as of the first free elections of the GDR on March 18th, 1990.

Hotel Adlon

Beeing at Pariser Platz, the Hotel Adlon is not only the hotel with the best adress in Berlin, but it is also the top hotel of the city. Founder of the hotel was Lorenz Adlon, who already had experiences with other hotels like the "Mille Collones" in Amsterdam and the "Continental" in Berlin.

The Hotel Adlon - which's architects where Carl Gause and Robert Leibniz - was inaugurated in 1907 by Wilhelm II as "the most beautiful and most modern hotel of it's time". Soon people like Marlene Dietrich, Thomas Mann, Edison, Ford, Rockefeller or Einstein stayed there. It was even used as winter residence by noble families and as unofficial guesthouse by the Foreign Office, who did not have a guesthouse of their own.

During the war the building nearly stayed intact. It was used as hospital when a fire destroyed most parts of it on May 2nd, 1945.

In August 1997 the rebuilt Hotel Adlon was reopened.

Other buildings at Pariser Platz

After the wall fell, the reconstruction of Pariser Platz began. The new buildings do not all show all the facades of the old ones, they are designed to fit the old appearance in a plainer way.

So you will find the Haus Sommer to the left of Brandenburg Gate, which is used by Commerzbank today. To the right: the Liebermann building (named after Max Liebermann, painter and president of the Academy of Arts), the "Palais am Pariser Platz", the building of the Dresdner Bank (Eugen-Gutmann-Haus), the french embassy, a business building and the Europa-Haus (Europe House).

Between Hotel Adlon and Haus Sommer/ Brandenburger Tor are the Academy of Arts, the building of the Deutsche Genossenschaftsbank (DG-Bank) and a gap which will be filled by the embassy of the USA.