| | | Berlin
Berlin (Germany)
| | | | Visite virtuelle |  | 28 sections et 208 éléments |
 |
Bridge(s) (2)
Government Quarter
|  | Moltkebrücke
entre 1886 et 1891
The bridge cross the Spree between the Central Station and the Chancellery.
|
Unter den Linden
Monument(s) and Building(s) (7)
Government Quarter
| Bundestag (5)
Reichstag Building
1894
The Reichstag Building in Berlin was constructed to house the Reichstag, the first parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag until 1933.
|
|  | Berlin Central Station (7)
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
entre 2002 et 2006
Berlin Hauptbahnhof is the main railway station in Berlin, and the largest crossing station in Europe. It began full operation two days after a ceremonial opening on 26 May 2006.
|
Unter den Linden
|  | Brandenburg Gate (1)
Brandenburger Tor
entre 1788 et 1791
The Brandenburg Gate is a former city gate and one of the main symbols of Berlin, Germany. It is located between the Pariser Platz and the Platz des 18. März and is the only remaining gate of a series through which one formerly entered Berlin. One block to its north lies the Reichstag.
|
Kreuzberg
|  | Checkpoint Charlie (3)
entre 1945 et 1989
Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to a crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War, located at the junction of Friedrichstraße with Zimmerstraße and Mauerstraße (which coincidentally means "Wall Street"). It is in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood, which was divided by the Berlin Wall.
|
Mitte
|  | Berlin Cathedral (5)
Berliner Dom
approx. entre 1950 et 1970
Berlin Cathedral is a Lutheran cathedral in Berlin, Germany. It is located on Museum Island in the Mitte district, and was built between 1895 and 1905. Dedicated on February 27, 1905, it faces the Lustgarten (a city park) and the former site of the imperial palace, the Stadtschloss.
|
Tiergarten
|  | Victory Column (8)
Siegessäule
entre 1865 et 1873
Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian war, by the time the Victory Column was inaugurated on 2 September 1873 Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870/1871), giving the statue a new purpose.
|
City
|  | Berlin Wall
entre 1961 et 1989
The Berlin Wall was a barrier separating West Berlin from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany. The longer 'inner German border' demarcated the remainder of the East-West German border between the two states. Both borders were part of the Iron Curtain.
|
Potsdamer Platz
|  | Tilla Durieux Park
Tilla Durieux is a "contemporary park design" which facilitates the residential and commercial businesses that surround the park. The buildings that surround Tilla Durieux act as walls that frame the linear expanse. The five seesaws located in the center, impressive due to their size, help break up the contemporary non-traditional park designed by DS Landscape Architects.
|
Tiergarten
|  | Tiergarten (11)
Tiergarten (German for Zoo) is the name of both a large park in the centre of Berlin and a locality within the borough of Mitte. Before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin.
|
Government Quarter
Potsdamer Platz
| Sony Center (8)
entre 1996 et 2000
The Sony Center is a Sony-sponsored building complex located at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany. It opened in 2000.
|
| Daimler Chrysler Areal (10)
entre 1994 et 1998
Half of the total 340,000 square metres of floor space at the 70,000 square metre large site of the DaimlerChrysler Berlin headquarters consists of offices, 30 percent consists of cultural, commercial or gastronomic facilities, and 20 percent of residential housing - in total, 10,000 people live and work there.
|
|  | Lenné Triangle (4)
Lenné Dreeick
entre 1997 et 2003
The "Lenné Dreeick" was named in honour of Peter Joseph Lenné, the designer of Tiergarten, the city's central park. Located directly at the north side of Potsdamer Platz, it lay as fallow wasteland until the fall of the Wall, for though it was not actually surrounded by the Wall the triangular area between Ebertstrasse, Bellevuestrasse and Lennéstrasse officially belonged to East Berlin.
|
|  | Park Colonnades (1)
A+T site
entre 1990 et 2000
For the site east of the new Tilla Durieux Park, the Italian architect Grassi suggested a strictly disciplined and symmetrical series of five buildings, the H-shaped ground plan of which is broken only at the northern main building and the southern residential building.
|
Unter den Linden
|  | Gendarmenmarkt (12)
vers 1680
"Gendarmenmarkt" was once nothing more than simple meadows and farmland abutting the original city walls of Berlin, eventually gaining its name from the Regiment of the "Military King" Friedrich Wilhelms the First, who had his stables - the "Gens d'armes" - here in 18th Century.
|
|  | Unter den Linden and around (29)
1573
A boulevard of linden trees was planted from 1647 before the gates of the city by the Great Elector, who wanted to ride from his castle to the hunting grounds in the Tiergarten more comfortably. Over the course of its long history, this stretch became the best known and grandest street in Berlin.
|
Kreuzberg
|  | Kreuzberg (7)
Kreuzberg consists of two different parts, the south-eastern SO 36 and the south-west SW 61. These designations refer to the old postal codes for the two areas in West Berlin. Kreuzberg has emerged from its history as one of the poorest quarters in Berlin in the late 1970s, where it was an isolated section of West Berlin to one of Berlin's cultural centers in the middle of the reunified city.
|
Kulturforum
|  | Kulturforum (6)
The Kulturforum is a collection of cultural buildings in Berlin, Germany. It was built up in the 1950s and 60s at the edge of West Berlin, after most of the once unified city's cultural assets had been lost behind the Berlin Wall.
|
Tiergarten
Friedrichstraße and Spandauer Vorstadt
|  | Friedrichstraße and around (11)
The Friedrichstraße is a major culture and shopping street in central Berlin, forming the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. It runs from the northern part of the old Mitte district (north of which it is called Chausseestraße) to the Hallesches Tor in the district of Kreuzberg.
|
|  | Spandau (9)
Spandauer Vorstadt
Spandau is the fifth and westernmost borough (Bezirk) of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and along the western bank of the Havel.
|
Alexanderplatz Nikolaiviertel
Kurfürstendamm
|  | Kurfürstendamm (4)
1542
The Kurfürstendamm, known locally as the Ku'damm, is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin, Germany. The street takes its name from the former Kurfürsten (Electors) of the Holy Roman Empire.
|
Museums Island
|  | Museums Island (1)
Museumsinsel
entre 1824 et 1930
The Berlin Museumsinsel is a complex of buildings
composed of individual museums of outstanding historical and artistic importance located in the heart of the city.
|
| | |
| | Description | |
|
Berlin was devastated by bombing raids during the Second World War and many of the old buildings that escaped the bombs were eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s in both West and East. Much of this destruction was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new residential or business quarters and main roads. Berlin's unique recent history has left the city with an eclectic array of architecture and sights.
In the eastern part, many Plattenbauten can be found, reminders of Eastern Bloc ambitions to create complete residential areas with fixed ratios of shops, kindergartens and schools. Another difference between former east and west is in the design of little red and green men on pedestrian crossing lights (Ampelmännchen in German); the eastern versions received an opt-out during the standardization of road traffic signs after reunification. The eastern Ampelmännchen design is now used in the western part of the city as well.
Architecture
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is the second highest building in the European Union at 368 meters (1,207 ft). Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its 204 meter (669 ft) high observation floor. Starting here the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism Style of the Stalin era. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. The previously built-up part in front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological scene.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division. It has recently undergone a restoration.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany. It also appears on German euro coins (10 Cent / 20 Cent and 50 Cent). The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament, renovated in the 1950s after severe Second World War damage. The building was again remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
Gendarmenmarkt, a neoclassical square in Berlin whose name dates back to the Napoleonic occupation of the city, is bordered by two similarly designed cathedrals, the French Cathedral with its observation platform and the German Cathedral. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Berliner Dom, a Protestant cathedral and the third church on this site, is located on the Spree Island across from the site of the Berliner Stadtschloss and adjacent to the Lustgarten. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. Like many other buildings, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. The Cathedral of St. Hedwig is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree lined east-west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street and part of Humboldt University is located there.
Friedrichstraße was Berlin's legendary street during the Roaring Twenties. It combines twentieth century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after 1995 and was not rebuilt as it was divided by the Wall. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonic. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is situated to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to the fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. Oranienburger Straße and the nearby New Synagogue were the center of Jewish culture before 1933, and regains being it today.
The Straße des 17 Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as central East-West-Axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately half-way from the Brandenburg Gate is the Großer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated 1938-39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag. The site is annually used as the center stage for the Love Parade.
The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is situated in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Near by on Tauentzienstraße is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store.
West of the center, Schloss Bellevue is the residence of the German President. Schloss Charlottenburg, which was burnt out in the Second World War and largely destroyed, has been rebuilt and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin.
Funkturm Berlin is a 150 meter (492 ft) tall lattice radio tower at the fair area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower, which stands on insulators, and has a restaurant 55 meters (180 ft) and an observation deck 126 meters (413 ft) above ground, which is reachable by an elevator. As the Berliner Funkturm is an open lattice structure, its elevator has windows.
Museums, galleries
Berlin is home to 153 museums. The ensemble on the Museum Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is situated in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben. As early as 1841 it was designated a "district dedicated to art and antiquities" by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti, and the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of the collections they house.
Apart from the Museum Island, there is a wide variety of museums. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the 13th to the 18th centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in 20th century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Berlin-Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus Archiv is an architecture museum.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on 2,000 years of German-Jewish history. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde (museum of natural history) near Berlin Hauptbahnhof has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and the best preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx.
In Dahlem, there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the Museum of Indian Art, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of European Cultures, as well as the Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War), the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum. The museum, which is a private venture, exhibits a comprehensive array of material about people who devised ingenious plans to flee the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum. | | Histoire | |
|
The earliest evidence of Berlin is an artifact dated approximately 45 years before the official founding of the city. A wooden beam from a cellar near the (demolished) Petrikirche in Petriplatz, which is now located in Berlin's Mitte District but was originally part of Cölln, has been dated to 1157. The first written mention of towns in the area of present-day Berlin dates from the late 12th and early 13th century. The suburb of Spandau is first mentioned in 1197, and Köpenick in 1209, though these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns : Cölln (on the Fisher Island) is first mentioned in a 1237 document that references a priest at Petrikirche. Berlin (across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel) is referenced in a document from 1244. From the beginning, the two cities formed an economic and social unit. In 1307, the two cities were united politically. Over time, the twin cities came to be known simply as Berlin, the larger of the pair.
In 1415, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. His successor, Frederick II, established Berlin as capital of the Margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. In 1448 citizens rebelled in the "Berlin Indignation" against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. In 1451 Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
17th-19th century
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 had devastating consequences for Berlin. A third of the houses were damaged and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the "Great Elector", who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots. More than 15,000 Huguenots went to Brandenburg, of whom 6,000 settled in Berlin. By 1700, approximately twenty percent of Berlin's residents were French, and their cultural influence on the city was immense. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
With the coronation of Frederick I in 1701 as king, Berlin became the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1740 Friedrich II, known as Frederick the Great (1740-1786) came to power. Berlin became, under the rule of the philosophically-oriented Frederick II, a center of the Enlightenment. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main rail hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, outlying suburbs including Wedding, Moabit, and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire.
20th century
At the end of the First World War in 1918, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed in Berlin. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act united dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into a greatly expanded city and established Berlin as a separate administrative region. After this expansion, Berlin had a population of around four million.
On January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Nazi rule destroyed Berlin's Jewish community, which had numbered 170,000 before 1933. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, thousands of the city's German Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp or, in early 1943, were shipped to death camps, such as Auschwitz. During the war, large parts of Berlin were destroyed in the 1943-45 air raids and during the Battle of Berlin. After the end of the war in Europe in 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to the occupation zones into which Germany was divided. The sectors of the Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet sector formed East Berlin.
All four allies retained shared responsibility for Berlin. However, the growing political differences between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union led the latter, which controlled the territory surrounding Berlin, to impose the Berlin Blockade, an economic blockade of West Berlin. The allies successfully overcame the Blockade by airlifting food and other supplies into the city from 24 June 1948 to 11 May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany and consisted of the American, British and French zones, but excluded those 3 countries' zones of Berlin, while the Marxist-Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin remained a free city that was separate from the Federal Republic of Germany, and issued its own postage stamps. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British and French airlines. Lufthansa and other German airlines were prohibited from flying to West Berlin.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory. East Germany, however, proclaimed East Berlin (which it described only as "Berlin") as its capital, a move that was not recognized by the Western powers. Although half the size and population of West Berlin, it included most of the historic center of the city. The tensions between east and west culminated in the construction of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and other barriers around West Berlin by East Germany on 13 August 1961 and were exacerbated by a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany.
Berlin was completely separated. It was possible for Westerners to pass from one to the other only through strictly controlled checkpoints. For most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was no longer possible. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access across East Germany to West Berlin and ended the potential for harassment or closure of the routes.
In 1989, pressure from the East German population brought a transition to a market-based economy in East Germany, and its citizens gained free access across the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, which was subsequently mostly demolished. Not much is left of it today; the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain near the Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree preserves a portion of the Wall.
On 3 October 1990 the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin became the German capital according to the unification treaty. In 1999, the German parliament and government began their work in Berlin.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
Text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License | | | |
| |
|
