Travel to Germany: Imperial Berlin: Photo 1

German architects of the 19th Century, like their peers in many other countries, worshipped Greece, which is why the Brandenburg Gate, designed by a self-taught architect, Carl Langhans, is a dead-ringer for the Propylaea, the famous entrance--under perpetual reconstruction--to the Acropolis. The bronze figure is of Nike in her quadriga, a four-horsepower chariot. It was added in 1793, two years after the stonework was finished. (Comparable ensembles can be found in London's Wellington Arch, the Arc du Triomphe in Paris, Rome's Vittorio Emanuele Monument, and vestigially in the horses of St. Mark's, in Venice.) The gate was destroyed in World War II, so the gate today is a reproduction, including a recasting of the statue. As for the gate itself? Originally, it was a gate in the Berlin city wall. Another wall, the Berlin wall of 1961, blocked the gate for almost 30 years.

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Back to Germany: Imperial Berlin chapter

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