Brandenburg Gate is the only survivor of 18 gates that once surrounded old Berlin. Built in 1788 and modelled after a Greek temple, it was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans and finished in 1793. Napoleon marched through it in 1806 and dismantled the Quadriga, the four-horse chariot carrying Victoria, goddess of victory, as war booty. Outraged Prussians retrieved it from Paris in 1814 and restored it in a gigantic festival.
In 1933, Hitler's torchlit parade streamed through the gate. Jewish painter Max Liebermann, who lived next door, watched from his window and famously remarked that he couldn't eat enough to vomit as much as he wanted to. The gate stood isolated in the death strip between the two Berlin Walls from 1961 to 1989. When the Wall fell on November 9, 1989, crowds surged here to celebrate, some climbing onto the gate itself.
VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the gate's transformation from Prussian triumph to Nazi spectacle and Cold War symbol, revealing how its five passages witnessed Ronald Reagan's demand to tear down the Wall and the euphoric night when history suddenly happened.