t The larger-than-life-size statues of Marx (seated) and Engels at the Marx-Engels-Forum
The Chapel of the Holy Spirit is the only surviving hospital chapel in Berlin. It was built as part of a hospital complex in the second half of the 13th century, and was rebuilt in the 15th century. The hospital was demolished in 1825, but the chapel was retained. In 1906, it was made into a newly erected College of Trade, designed by Cremer & Wolffenstein.
The chapel is a fine example of Gothic brick construction. Its modest interior features a 15th-century star-shaped vault. The supports under the vault are decorated with half-statues of prophets and saints.
This hands-on museum on the Spree embankment opposite the Berliner Dom gives an insight into the daily lives of East Germans during the era of the DDR and demonstrates how the secret police kept a watchful eye on the city’s people. Exhibits include a replica of a typical living room and a gleaming example of the iconic Trabant car.
This vast square, which stretches from the Neptune fountain to the Spree river in the west, was given the inappropriate name Marx-Engels-Forum (it is not really a forum). Devoid of any surroundings, the only features in this square are the statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The statues, added in 1986, are by Ludwig Engelhart. Due to the ongoing extension of an underground line, the statues were moved into a corner.
The square’s fate after the work is completed is still being discussed. Some prefer that the area be built up with small-scale developments, while others wish it to be recreated as a public forum.
t The larger-than-life-size statues of Marx (seated) and Engels at the Marx-Engels-Forum
If you plan to visit Rotes Rathaus, don’t forget your passport – you can’t get in without photo ID.
This impressive structure is Berlin’s main town hall; its name means simply “Red Town Hall”. Its predecessor was a much more modest building and by the end of the 19th century it was insufficient to meet the needs of the growing metropolis.
The present building was designed by Hermann Friedrich Waesemann, and its construction was completed in 1869. The architect took his main inspiration from Italian Renaissance municipal buildings, but the tower is reminiscent of Laon cathedral in France. The walls are made from red brick and it was this, rather than the political orientation of the mayors, that gave the town hall its name. The building has a continuous frieze known as the “stone chronicle”, which was added in 1879. It features scenes and figures from the city’s history and the development of its economy and science.
The Rotes Rathaus was badly damaged during World War II and, following its reconstruction (1951–58), it became the seat of the East Berlin authorities. The West Berlin magistrate was housed in the Schöneberg town hall. After the reunification of Germany, the Rotes Rathaus became the centre of authority, housing the offices of the mayor, the magistrates’ offices and state rooms. The forecourt sculptures were added in 1958. These are by Fritz Cremer and depict Berliners helping to rebuild the city.
t The tiered clock tower of the Rotes Rathaus
The magnificent, Neo-Baroque style Neptune Fountain is a splendid feature on the main axis of the Rotes Rathaus. It was moved here from the former Stadtschloss (Berlin Castle) in 1969, and will return there when rebuilding of the castle is complete.
The statue of Neptune in a dynamic pose at the centre of the fountain is surrounded by four figures representing Germany’s greatest rivers: the Rhine, the Vistula, the Oder and the Elbe. The naturalism of the composition and the detail, such as the beautiful bronze fishes, crayfish and fishing nets, are noteworthy.
Experience Alexanderplatz
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STAY Nikolai Residence This three-star option offers accommodation right in the heart of the Nikolaiviertel. Service is friendly and personal. Although there are no dining facilities, a traditional German breakfast of cheeses, breads, cold cuts and jams is available at the café (Reinhard’s) right next door. X3 ⌂ Am Nussbaum 5 ∑ nikolai-residence.com ¡¡¡ |
The Nikolaikirche is the oldest sacred building of historic Berlin. The original structure erected on this site was started probably around 1230 when the town was granted its municipal rights. What remains now of this stone building is the massive base of the two-tower façade of the present church, which dates from c 1300. The presbytery was completed around 1402, but the construction of the main building went on until the mid-15th century. The result was a magnificent Gothic brick hall-church, featuring a chancel with an ambulatory and a row of low chapels. In 1877 Hermann Blankenstein, who conducted the church restoration works, removed most of its Baroque modifications and reconstructed the front towers.
Destroyed by bombing in 1945, the Nikolaikirche was eventually rebuilt in 1987 and shows a permanent exhibit on Berlin’s history. The west wall of the southern nave contains Andreas Schlüter’s monument to the goldsmith Daniel Männlich and his wife, which features a gilded relief portrait of the couple above a mock doorway.
t The copper-clad double spires of the Nikolaikirche
A small townhouse situated on elegant Poststrasse, the Knoblauchhaus is the only Baroque building in Nikolaiviertel that escaped damage during World War II. It was built in 1759 for the Knoblauch family, which includes the famous architect, Eduard Knoblauch. His works include, among others, the Neue Synagoge.
The current appearance of the building is the result of work carried out in 1835, when the façade was given a Neo-Classical look. The ground floor houses a popular wine bar, while the upper floors belong to a museum. On the first floor it is possible to see the interior of an early 19th-century middle-class home, including a beautiful Biedermeier-style room.
Artist, illustrator and photographer Heinrich Zille (1858–1929) was one of Berlin’s best-known personalities. Renowned for his caricatures of everyday working-class life in the city, Zille was partly responsible for Berlin’s image as a loud, rebellious, snarky, poor, proud and sometimes downright unsavoury capital.
Zille’s collection of sketches, drawings, lithographs, photographs and cartoons can now be found in this small but charming three-room museum, along with a film and some family pictures. It has only minimal information in English, but the gist of the artist’s work is easy to appreciate. His scabrously funny portrayals of beggars, urchins, labourers and prostitutes, finding in them a zest for life that transcended the poverty of their existence, made him immensely popular with Berlin’s underclass.
Nearby you can find a reconstructed (and relocated) version of one of Zille’s favourite watering holes, Zum Nussbaum, whose characters and stories often informed his work.
INSIDER TIP
The Nikolaikirche hosts free 30-minute classical concerts every Friday at 5pm. Under the motto “Listen – Relax – Reflect” they span works from major composers as well as chamber music, and often employ the church’s own organ.
t Visitors on the spiral staircase at the Ephraim-Palais
The corner entrance of the Ephraim-Palais, standing at the junction of Poststrasse and Mühlendamm, used to be called “die schönste Ecke Berlins”, meaning “Berlin’s most beautiful corner”. This Baroque palace was built by Friedrich Wilhelm Diterichs in 1766 for Nathan Veitel Heinrich Ephraim, Frederick the Great’s Mint master and court jeweller.
During the widening of the Mühlendamm bridge in 1935 the palace was demolished, which may have been due in some part to the Jewish origin of its owner. Parts of the façade, saved from demolition, were stored in a warehouse in the western part of the city. In 1983 they were sent to East Berlin and used in the reconstruction of the palace, which was erected a few metres from its original site. One of the first-floor rooms features a restored Baroque ceiling, designed by Andreas Schlüter. The ceiling previously adorned Palais Wartenberg, which was dismantled in 1889.
Currently the Ephraim-Palais houses a branch of the Stadtmuseum Berlin (Berlin City Museum). It hosts a series of temporary exhibitions and events focused on Berlin’s local artistic and cultural history.
These picturesque ruins surrounded by greenery are the remains of the early Gothic Franciscan Friary Church. The Franciscan friars settled in Berlin in the early 13th century. Between 1250 and 1265 they built a church and a friary, which survived almost unchanged until 1945. The church was a triple-nave basilica with an elongated presbytery, widening into a heptagonal section that was added to the structure in around 1300.
Protestants took over the church after the Reformation and the friary became a famous grammar school, whose graduates included Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
The friary was so damaged in World War II that it was subsequently demolished, while the church was partially reconstructed in 2003–4 and is now a venue for concerts and exhibitions. The giant Corinthian capitals, emerging from the grass near the church ruins, are from a portal from the Stadtschloss (City Palace).
t Ruins of the Franziskaner Klosterkirche
This small building, with its sharply angled arcades, has had a turbulent history. It was built around 1280 as part of Berlin’s old town hall in Spandauer Strasse. The original building was a single-storey arcaded construction with vaults supported by a central pillar. It was open on three sides and adjoined the shorter wall of the town hall. A further storey was added in 1485 to provide a hall, to which the magnificent lattice vaults were added several decades later, in 1555.
In 1692, Johann Arnold Nering refurbished the town hall in a Baroque style but left the arcades unaltered. Then, in 1868, the whole structure was dismantled to provide space for the new town hall, the Rotes Rathaus. The Baroque part was lost forever, but the Gothic arcades and the first-floor hall were moved to the palace gardens in Babelsberg, where they were reassembled as a building in their own right. When the Nikolaiviertel was undergoing renovation it was decided to restore the court of justice as well. The present building in Poststrasse is a copy of a part of the former town hall, erected on a different site from the original one. Inside it is a restaurant serving local cuisine.
The year the original gin mill opened on the site of Berlin’s oldest pub: Gaststätte Zur letzten Instanz.
The Parish Church was, at one time, one of the most beautiful Baroque churches in Berlin. Johann Arnold Nering prepared the initial design, with four chapels framing a central tower. Unfortunately, Nering died as construction started in 1695. The work was continued by Martin Grünberg, but the collapse of the nearly completed vaults forced a change in the design. Instead of the intended tower over the main structure, a vestibule with a front tower was built. The church was completed in 1703, but then, in 1714, its tower was enlarged to accommodate a carillon.
World War II had a devastating effect on the Parochialkirche. The interior was completely destroyed, and the tower collapsed. Following stabilization of the main structure, the façade was restored, with reproduced historic elements set within a plain interior. In 2016, a replica of the former tower top was mounted. It bears a new carillon with 52 bells.
Experience Alexanderplatz
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These two adjoining houses have quite different histories. The older one, at Molkenmarkt No. 2, is Palais Schwerin, which was built by Jean de Bodt in 1704 for a government minister, Otto von Schwerin. Despite subsequent remodelling, the palace kept its beautiful sculpted window cornices, the interior wooden staircase and the magnificent cartouche featuring the von Schwerin family crest.
The adjoining house is the Münze, or Mint, built in 1936. Its façade is decorated with a copy of the frieze that once adorned the previous Neo-Classical Mint building in Werderscher Markt. The antique style of the frieze was designed by Friedrich Gilly and produced in the workshop of J G Schadow.
t Gaststätte Zur letzten Instanz by the Stadtmauer
The Town Wall that once surrounded the settlements of Berlin and Cölln was erected in the second half of the 13th century. The ring of fortifications, built from brick and fieldstone, was made taller in the 14th century. Having finally lost its military significance by the 17th century, the wall was almost entirely dismantled, though some small sections survive around Waisenstrasse, having been incorporated into other buildings.