Brandenburg Gate Trivia | 30 facts about the German landmark

The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, and one of the most popular monuments in Germany.

Let’s find out more about it!

The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin.
It was built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after the temporary restoration of order during the Batavian Revolution.
It’s one of the best-known landmarks of Germany.
It was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.
It used to be the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz.
One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament (Bundestag).
The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, a boulevard of linden trees which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs.
Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.
After the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon was the first to use the Brandenburg Gate for a triumphal procession, and took its quadriga to Paris.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814 and the Prussian occupation of Paris by General Ernst von Pfuel, the quadriga was restored to Berlin.
It was now redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the new role of the Brandenburg Gate as a Prussian triumphal arch.
The goddess, now definitely Victoria, was equipped with the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross on her lance with a wreath of oak leaves.
Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate at night
The quadriga faces east, as it did when it was originally installed in 1793. Only the royal family was allowed to pass through the central archway, as well as members of the Pfuel family, from 1814 to 1919.
The Kaiser granted this honour to the family in gratitude to Ernst von Pfuel, who had overseen the return of the quadriga to the top of the gate.
In addition, the central archway was also used by the coaches of ambassadors on the single occasion of their presenting their letters of credence to council.View over Pariser Platz, June 1945 Bernard Montgomery and Soviet marshals Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky leave the Brandenburg Gate on 12 July 1945 after being decorated by Montgomery.
When the Nazis ascended to power, they used the gate as a party symbol. The gate survived World War II and was one of the damaged structures still standing in the Pariser Platz ruins in 1945 (another being the Academy of Fine Arts).
The gate was badly damaged with holes in the columns from bullets and nearby explosions. One horse’s head from the original quadriga survived, and is today kept in the collection of the Märkisches Museum.
Efforts to disguise the government district of Berlin and confuse Allied bombers had included the construction of a replica Brandenburg Gate located away from the city centre.
After Germany’s surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort.
The holes were patched, but were visible for many years. The gate was located in the Soviet occupation zone, directly next to the border to the British occupation zone, which later became the border between East and West Berlin.The Brandenburg Gate as seen from Unter den Linden in East Berlin in July 1981.
Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate until the day after construction began on the Berlin Wall on Barbed Wire Sunday, 13 August 1961.
West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin’s mayor, Willy Brandt, who had returned from a federal election campaign tour in West Germany earlier the same day.
The wall passed directly by the western side of the gate, which was closed throughout the Berlin Wall period, which ended on 22 December 1989.
The Propylaeum of Athens’ Acropolis – that’s what the gate was modelled on.
2000 until 2002 – that’s when the Gate was renovated by Berlin’s Foundation for the Protection of Monuments, costing a massive 6 million Euros.
4000- that’s the number of counter-demonstrators who gathered to prevent 300 supporters of the anti-Islam group Pegida from marching from the city hall to the Gate on January 5th 2015. In addition, all the lights at the Gate were switched off.
130,000 – that’s the number of people who gathered at the Gate following the attacks on an Orlando gay club in 2016. The Gate was lit up in rainbow colours to commemorate the 49 victims.
The luxury Adlon Hotel, the French and the US embassies – those are the buildings which surround the Gate, in its prime location at Pariser Platz, otherwise known as Berlin’s “gute Stube” (“best room”).