Berliner Dom and the Hohenzollern Crypt
Why is it significant?
Turn your face up to the enormous green dome, the four corner towers, the staircases and statues piled one on top of another. If it feels a little like an imperial wedding cake, that is roughly the idea. The Berliner Dom was built to impress, and it still does.
Key Facts
| Place | Berliner Dom and the Hohenzollern Crypt |
|---|---|
| Address | Am Lustgarten, 10178 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.51910, 13.40110 |
| Part of Walk | Kings, Domes and Empty Shelves: Museum Island & Prussian Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
Turn your face up to the enormous green dome, the four corner towers, the staircases and statues piled one on top of another. If it feels a little like an imperial wedding cake, that is roughly the idea. The Berliner Dom was built to impress, and it still does.
It went up between 1894 and 1905, designed by Julius Raschdorff and pushed forward by the last German emperor, Wilhelm the Second. Wilhelm wanted a Protestant answer to Saint Peter's in Rome, a church that would say the Hohenzollerns ruled by the grace of God just as surely as any pope. An older, smaller cathedral built for Frederick the Great stood here before; it was pulled down to make room for this one.
But the real heart of the building is underground. In the crypt lie around ninety members of the Hohenzollern family, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, in coffins of wood, tin and stone, some richly decorated, some heartbreakingly small. Upstairs, inside the church, stand two gilded sarcophagi designed by Andreas Schlüter for the first royal couple, King Frederick the First and Queen Sophie Charlotte. She was a brilliant woman who corresponded with the philosopher Leibniz, and the palace of Charlottenburg is named after her.
Now the surprise: the two most famous Hohenzollerns are not here. Frederick the Great wanted to rest beside his dogs on the terrace of Sanssouci in Potsdam, and only in 1991, after reunification, was his wish finally granted. And Wilhelm the Second, who built this church, died in exile in the Netherlands in 1941 and is buried there. He never came back to the cathedral he had made.
Bombs set the dome on fire in 1944, and for decades the building stood damaged. Restoration began in the GDR years and was completed in 1993, with a simpler and lower dome than before. Now walk west across the Lustgarten lawn, past the fountain, towards the long row of columns at the far side.