The Brandenburg Gate is the only surviving city gate of Berlin's former 18 gates, completed in 1791 and carrying two and a half centuries of German history on its sandstone columns. Built as a symbol of peace by Carl Gotthard Langhans in the Doric order, it has been used since as a triumphal arch for Prussian military processions, a backdrop to Nazi rallies, and, during the Cold War, the most photographed symbol of German division.
For 28 years, from 1961 to 1989, the Gate stood in the death strip between the two Berlins — inaccessible from either side, visible from both. It was the image that everyone saw when they thought of Berlin: this neoclassical arch standing alone in a no-man's land of concrete and wire. When the Wall fell in November 1989, the first thing crowds from both sides did was climb on the Gate. The photograph of that moment — people on the columns, on the quadriga, the Gate suddenly freed from its concrete frame — remains one of the defining images of the twentieth century's end.