Pariser Platz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pariser Platz is a square in the center of Berlin, Germany, situated by the Brandenburg Gate at the end of the Unter den Linden. The square is named after the French capital Paris in memory of Napoleon's defeat in Leipzig in 1813 and is one of the main focal points of the city.
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[edit] History
Pariser Platz is the square immediately behind the Brandenburg Gate when approaching the centre of Berlin from the Tiergarten in the west. The neo-classical Brandenburg Gate was completed in the early 1790s by Carl Gotthard Langhans; and the copper quadriga by Johann Gottfried Schadow was placed on it in 1793. The quadriga was seized by Napoleon in 1806, and returned in 1814 after his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, when the square was renamed Pariser Platz in triumph.
The Brandenburg Gate was the main gate in the western side of the customs wall that surrounded the city in the eighteenth century, and the Pariser Platz is at the west end of the avenue of Unter den Linden, the ceremonial axis of the city, down which the victorious troops of all regimes from the Hohenzollerns to the German Democratic Republic have marched in triumph.
Before the World War II, Pariser Platz was the grandest square in Berlin, walled by the American and French embassies, the finest hotel (the Adlon Hotel), the Academy of the Arts, and several quite posh blocks of apartments and offices.
During the last years of World War II, all of the buildings around the square were turned to rubble by air raids and heavy artillery bombardment. Being the only structure left standing in the ruins of Pariser Platz in 1945, the Brandenburg Gate was restored by the East Berlin and West Berlin governments. After the war and especially with the construction of the Berlin Wall, the square was laid waste and became part of the death zone dividing the city.
When the city was reunited in 1990, there was broad consensus that the Pariser Platz would be made into a fine urban space again. The embassies would move back, the hotel and arts academy would be reinstated, and prestigious firms would be encouraged to build round the square. Under the rules of critical reconstruction, eaves heights had to be 22 meters, and buildings had to have a proper termination against the sky. Stone cladding was to be used as far as possible. Interpretations of these constraints, however, have varied to a great extent.
[edit] Noted residents
- Achim von Arnim, poet and novelist
- August von Kotzebue, dramatist
- Max Liebermann, painter
- Giacomo Meyerbeer, composer
- Friedrich Karl von Savigny, jurist (Historical School)
- Albert Speer, architect, Nazi minister for armaments
- Friedrich von Wrangel, Prussian Generalfeldmarschall
[edit] Transport
The square has an U-Bahn station of the same name in planning.
[edit] References
- In Pariser Platz - design and construction of town square in Berlin, Germany, by Anne Vyne, in The Architectural Review, No. 1, 1999.
