Pariser Platz

Pariser Platz is a square in the centre of Berlin, Germany, situated by the Brandenburg Gate at the end of the Unter den Linden. The square is named after the French capital Paris in honour of the anti-Napoleon Allies' occupation of Paris in 1814, and is one of the main focal points of the city.

Pariser Platz is the square immediately behind the Brandenburg Gate when approaching the centre of Berlin from the Tiergarten in the west. The neo-classical Brandenburg Gate was completed in the early 1790s by Carl Gotthard Langhans. Until 1814 the square was known simply as Quarré or Viereck (the Square). In March 1814, when Prussian troops along with the other Allies captured Paris after the overthrow of Napoleon, it was renamed Pariser Platz to mark this triumph.

The Brandenburg Gate was the main gate in the western side of the Customs Wall that surrounded the city in the eighteenth century, and the Pariser Platz is at the west end of the avenue of Unter den Linden, the ceremonial axis of the city, down which the victorious troops of all regimes from the Hohenzollerns to the German Democratic Republic have marched in triumph.

Before World War II, Pariser Platz was the grandest square in Berlin, flanked by the American and French embassies, the finest hotel (the Adlon Hotel), the Academy of the Arts, and several blocks of apartments and offices.

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