Pariser Platz

The Embassy of France in Berlin is the diplomatic mission of the French Republic in Germany. Designed by Christian de Portzamparc and completed in 2002, it is at the same address, Pariser Platz 5, as the former embassy which was destroyed in World War II. Prior to German reunification, France had an embassy in the German Democratic Republic at a different address in Berlin and an embassy in the Federal Republic in Bonn.

The DZ Bank building (formerly DG Bank building) is an office, conference, and residential building located at Pariser Platz 3 in Berlin. It was designed by architect Frank Gehry and engineered by Hans Schober of Schlaich Bergermann & Partner. Construction began in 1998 and was completed in 2000. The building is mixed-use. Facing the Brandenburg Gate are offices, the headquarters of Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank. On the other side, facing Behrenstraße, are 39 residential apartments. Between the two is a large atrium, designed to be used as a conference or performance space. This is covered with a sophisticated glass-grid roof, curved in a complex form typical of Gehry's designs.

The Berlin–Copenhagen Cycle Route (German: Radfernweg Berlin-Kopenhagen) is a 630 km (390 mi) long-distance cycling route that connects the German and Danish capital cities. The German portion of the route, between Berlin and Rostock, is approximately 370 km (230 mi); the Danish portion, between Gedser and Copenhagen, is approximately 260 km (160 mi). Between Rostock and Gedser, cyclists must take a ferry. The Berlin–Copenhagen Cycle Route is part of the 6,000 km (3,700 mi) EuroVelo 7 cycling route, which runs from the top of Norway to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. It also forms part of the German Cycling Network's D-Route 11, which runs from the Bavarian Alps to the Baltic Sea.

The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor [ˈbʁandn̩ˌbʊʁɡɐ ˈtoːɐ̯] (listen)) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after restoring the Orangist power by suppressing the Dutch popular unrest. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which used to be the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament (Bundestag). The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, a boulevard of linden trees which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs. Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous histories of Germany and Europe, but also of European unity and peace.

The Embassy of the United States of America in Berlin is the diplomatic mission of the United States of America in the Federal Republic of Germany. It started in 1797, with the appointment of John Quincy Adams to Berlin, the capital of Prussia. There was no permanent building for the embassy until 1930, with the purchase of the Blücher Palace. During the U.S. involvement in World War II, the embassy ceased operations. During the Cold War, the United States had two embassies: one in Bonn, the capital of West Germany, and one in East Berlin, the capital of East Germany. In 1999, the embassy would fully be moved back to Berlin and, at present, it is located at the Pariser Platz.

The Representation of the European Commission in Germany is a representation of the European Commission with the head office located in Berlin. There are two more regional representation offices in Bonn and Munich. Jörg Wojahn is in charge of the representations in Germany since 1 September 2019, who was responsible of the representation office in Austria.

The Academy of Arts (German: Akademie der Künste) is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany.The Academy's predecessor organization was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Brandenburg Academy of Arts, an academic institution in which members could meet and discuss and share ideas. The current Academy was founded on 1 October 1993 as the re-unification of formerly separate East and West Berlin academies.

The Platz des 18. März (transl. 18 of March Square) is a public square in Berlin-Mitte located immediately west of the Brandenburg Gate, opposite Pariser Platz, at the junction of Ebertstraße and Straße des 17. Juni.

The Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin is a luxury hotel in Berlin, Germany. It is on Unter den Linden, the main boulevard in the central Mitte district, at the corner with Pariser Platz, directly opposite the Brandenburg Gate. The original Hotel Adlon was one of the most famous hotels in Europe. It opened in 1907 and was largely destroyed in 1945 in the closing days of World War II, though a small wing continued operating until 1984. The current hotel, which opened on August 23, 1997, is a new building with a design inspired by the original.

Zum schwarzen Ferkel ("The Black Piglet") was a tavern located at the corner of Unter den Linden and Neue Wilhelmstraße in Berlin. Said once to have been frequented by Heinrich Heine, Robert Schumann and E. T. A. Hoffmann, it was in the 1890s the meeting place for a circle of mainly Nordic writers and artists, including August Strindberg, Holger Drachmann and Edvard Munch but also the Pole Stanisław Przybyszewski and several Germans. The real name of the Weinstube, which was owned by a Gustav Türke, was Gustav Türkes Weinhandlung und Probierstube, but it was also known as "The Cloister". The name Zum schwarzen Ferkel was given to it by Strindberg as he thought the Armenian (or Bessarabian) wine-sack hanging over the entrance resembled a black piglet; the name was enthusiastically accepted by the owner. Strindberg had come to Berlin from Sweden in 1892, after his divorce the previous year from his first wife Siri von Essen, on the invitation of the Swedish writer Ola Hansson and his wife, the critic Laura Marholm, and for the first period in Berlin he stayed with the couple in their home in Friedrichshagen. After a while he started to refer to the place in letters as "Friedrichshölle" ("Friedrichs-Hell") and eventually moved into central Berlin, falling out with this former hosts in the process, and settling at a pension on Neue Wilhelmstrasse, close to Türke's tavern. The story of Strindberg's discovery and naming of the tavern comes from the Finnish writer Adolf Paul, and the circle at the Ferkel originally consisted of Strindberg, Paul, the German writer Richard Dehmel, the physician Carl Ludwig Schleich, the Polish journalist Stanisław Przybyszewski and a few others, all of whom had previously belonged to the group frequenting Ola Hansson's home in Friedrichshagen. Other Scandinavians arriving in Berlin would join the group. Edvard Munch became a regular after he had arrived in Berlin in October 1892 in connection with an exhibition that was scandalously closed after only seven days. The Norwegian writer Gunnar Heiberg became a member of the circle in November; other Norwegians included the painter couple Christian and Oda Krohg, the writer Axel Maurer and the poet Gabriel Finne. A quarrel between Munch and the Danish poet Holger Drachmann caused Strindberg temporarily to leave the group. He started seeing the Austrian journalist Frida Uhl, soon to be his second wife. After the couple had become secretly engaged and Frida Uhl had left Berlin temporarily for Munich, Strindberg returned to the Ferkel. Meanwhile Munch had introduced another female member of the group, the Norwegian music student Dagny Juel. Several of the men were attracted by Dagny Juel, who entered into a number of brief sexual liaisons within the circle, including a three-week relationship in March 1893 with the newly engaged Strindberg while Frida Uhl was still away. Juel married Przybyszewski on 18 August 1893; she later wrote some literary pieces and was murdered by a lover in Tbilisi in 1901. Munch, who was in love with her, felt betrayed, and he depicted her on several paintings; she is likely to be the model for his Jealousy. The main written testimonies to come out of the Ferkel circle was Adolf Paul's Strindberg-Erinnerungen und -Briefe (1914) and Strindberg's novel Klostret ("The Cloister") which was published only posthumously in 1966.

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer, pronounced [bɛʁˌliːnɐ ˈmaʊ̯ɐ] (listen)) was a guarded concrete barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. It encircled West Berlin, separating it from East German territory. Construction of the wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" from building a socialist state in East Germany. GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, pronounced [antifaˌʃɪstɪʃɐ ˈʃʊt͡sval] (listen)). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, over 100,000 people attempted to escape, and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin. In 1989, a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries—in Poland and Hungary in particular—caused a chain reaction in East Germany. In particular, the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 set in motion a peaceful development during which the Iron Curtain largely broke, the rulers in the East came under pressure, the Berlin Wall fell and finally the Eastern Bloc fell apart. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, the likes of souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall. The Brandenburg Gate, a few meters from the Berlin Wall, was opened on 22 December 1989. The demolition of the Wall officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in 1994. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

Berlin Brandenburger Tor (in German Bahnhof Berlin Brandenburger Tor) – formerly Berlin Unter den Linden (1936-2009) – is an underground railway station in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, located on the Unter den Linden boulevard near Hotel Adlon, Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate. It is served by the Berlin S-Bahn and U-Bahn, as well as local bus lines.