Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate gets the postcards, the speeches and the tour buses. Potsdam’s gate got there first.

Frederick the Great had it built after winning the Seven Years’ War, a triumphal arch modelled on Rome’s Arch of Constantine, replacing a much smaller gate in the town’s 1733 wall. Walk around it and something odd emerges: its two faces don’t match. Carl von Gontard designed one side, his student Georg Christian Unger the other. There was originally a single central passage, wide enough for carriages. Pedestrians waited until 1843 for walkways of their own.

It’s one of three city gates Potsdam still has, which is two more than Berlin can manage. VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tours stop here to trace the vanished city wall and tie the gate to Frederick’s victory, on a route that runs from the Dutch Quarter’s brick houses past the Nauener Gate.