A visit to Berlin must include – like the Acropolis in Athens – a walk between the Brandenburger Tor and the palace bridge “Unter den Linden”. Here is (and was) the cultural center of the city. Originally, the “Linden” (lime trees), as Berlin residents call their most beautiful boulevard, was a riding path on which Prussian Electoral Princes rode from the city palace to their hunting ground, the “Tiergarten”. Pariser Platz, in front of the city’s famous landmark, Brandenburger Tor, was once considered to be the most beautiful of all squares and the most noble residential address. With the modern reconstruction of the buildings after the fall of the wall it was possible to tie into the dazzling time before the war and to once again to create the connection to the Linden.

Behind Friedrichstrasse, you will find one of the most beautiful ensembles in Europe, the Forum Fridericianum. Seated on his steed, the most famous of Prussian kings, Frederick the Great, greets you.

Designed by Christian Daniel Rauch and cast in bronze, the equestrian statue was first returned to the Linden from its exile in Potsdam in 1980. Frederick the Great, a sensitive connoisseur and sponsor of the arts, imagined the Forum Fridericianum to be a large-scale cultural center that included opera, a library and the St. Hedwigskirche (church). No less than the famous Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff was charged with realizing the king’s plans. For the very musically inclined king, the centerpiece of the Forum Fridericianum was the opera house. 

On the other side of the Linden is the Humboldt University in the former palace of Frederick the Great’s brothers. Many great thinkers taught there: Hegel, Fichte, Einstein, Rudolf Virchow and Max Planck. Next to it, on the left, stands the Staatsbibliothek (national library), a mighty neo-Baroque structure. Enjoy the peace and quiet of the idyllic, vine-covered courtyard. The simple, classical Neue Wache to the right, near the university grounds, is an architectural peculiarity: It was the first building that Friedrich Schinkel, Prussia’s great master-builder, was allowed to build in the new classicism in 1818. Today, the former royal guard house is a reminder of the victims of war and violence. A worthy end to the Linden is the palace bridge of the arsenal, Berlin’s oldest Baroque structure, and the Opernpalais, which lies opposite it. The arsenal was originally built to store the royal weapons. Since 2004, the Deutsches Historisches Museum permanently occupies these exhibition spaces.