Why go
The Brandenburg Gate is the one sight every visitor to Berlin sees, and with good reason. It is the city’s only surviving historic gate and one of the earliest neoclassical buildings in Germany, but its fame comes from what happened around it. For almost three decades it stood in the no man’s land of the Berlin Wall, and on 22 December 1989 it reopened in front of around 100,000 people. Since then it has been the symbol of a reunified Germany and the backdrop to New Year’s Eve parties, marathons and celebrations.
Seeing it costs nothing and takes no planning. The gate stands on Pariser Platz at the eastern end of the Tiergarten, at the start of the boulevard Unter den Linden, and you can walk through it at any hour.
What to see
Carl Gotthard Langhans, architect to the Prussian court, designed the gate between 1788 and 1791, taking the monumental entrance to the Acropolis in Athens as his model. It is 26 metres high, 65.5 metres long and 11 metres deep, carried on two rows of six Doric columns. In 1793 Johann Gottfried Schadow’s Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses, was placed on top. Napoleon took it to Paris as booty in 1806, and it came back in triumph in 1814.
Walk through from the Tiergarten side to see the Quadriga facing east along Unter den Linden. Pariser Platz is framed by embassies, banks and the Hotel Adlon, all rebuilt after reunification on the footprint of the pre-war square. A line of cobbles in the road nearby marks where the Wall ran.
Inside the gate’s northern wing is a small Room of Silence, and the southern side once held a guardhouse for the toll collectors who checked goods entering the city.
Plan your visit
There are no opening hours and no tickets. Early morning is the best time for photographs without crowds, and after dark the gate is floodlit. Allow twenty minutes for the gate itself, or a couple of hours if you combine it with the Reichstag dome, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and a walk along Unter den Linden.
Brandenburger Tor station, served by the S-Bahn and the U5, is right beside the square. Many guided walking tours of the historic centre start here, and they are a good way to hear how the gate fits into the story of Prussia, the Nazi years and the Cold War. In Advent a large Christmas tree usually goes up in front of the gate, and the area is closed off for the free New Year’s Eve party.
Nearby
The Reichstag, home of the German parliament, is a five-minute walk north, and its glass dome is free if you register in advance. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe lies just south, beside the Tiergarten, Berlin’s great central park. East along Unter den Linden are Bebelplatz, the State Opera and Museum Island, about twenty minutes on foot. For Cold War history, Checkpoint Charlie and the Topography of Terror are a short walk to the south-east.