We took a walking tour today. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a great idea for all of the parts of me that aren’t attached to my feet. My poor, poor feet. Traipsing over all of the cobblestones has proven me a lightweight.

But never mind all of that. To the tourism!

(As you scroll through the pretty pictures, please remember there’s a nice video lower in this post as well.)

This guy makes up for whatever he’s losing in aerodynamics with an abundance of panache:

This is the Altes Museum, built between 1823 and 1830 to house the Prussian royal family’s art collection. It was restored in 2010 and 2011 and now holds the Berlin State Museums’ antiquities collection.

Do you remember all of those films of Adolf Hitler delivering speeches outdoors? A lot of them happened on those steps.

Up next is the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which is devoted to German history. Photos, film, sculpture, art, weapons, coins … there are apparently more than one million artifacts inside.

The building itself is the Zeughaus, or old Arsenal. Built between 1695 and 1730, it was an artillery arsenal for the display of cannons from Brandenburg and Prussia. It was turned into a military museum in 1875. In 1943, Hitler survived an assassination attempt there.

This is the law building at Humboldt University. Underground, in the courtyard, there is a display remembering the burning of the books under the Nazis. You stand over a glass pane that is flush into the ground. You look into a room that is full of empty bookshelves. There are said to be enough shelves there to house all of the estimated 20,000 books thought to be burned here in the Bebelplatz in May of 1933.

The plaque reads “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” “That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.”

Below is the Französischer Dom, the French Church of Friedrichstadt. The first parts went up from 1701 to 1705 for the Huguenot (Calvinist) community. At that time, Huguenots made up about 25 percent of Berlin’s population.

The Huguenots, French protestants, migrating for centuries throughout Europe, to Africa and North America to avoid persecution and violence and even war at home. The Germans needed people and so a deal was made. Some 50,000 settled throughout the country and about 20,000 in this region. The French language was spoken in the church for a century. They ultimately decided to switch to German in protest against the occupation of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806.

Now, across the courtyard is the Neue Kirche, or New Church. In this church they spoke in German. The original church went in about the same time as the Französischer Dom above. Originally it was a Calvinist congregation, but more and more Lutherans came to worship and in 1708 it became a Calvinist and Lutheran. This is the third church on the site. The congregation uses the other building for services.

In between the two churches is the concert hall we saw yesterday. The statue there honors the poet, philosopher and historian Friedrich Schiller, a prominent German dramatist and lyricist:

The penultimate stop on our walking tour was of the holocaust memorial. (A stop or two before it we saw the Fuhrerbunker, which is marked by only one sign amid nice, modern apartments.)

Anyway, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a 4.7-acre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae”, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are organized in grid rows and vary in height. Construction began in 2003 and the site was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, the 60th anniversary of V-E Day.

Peter Eisenman, who designed it, called it “the place of no meaning.” Our tour guide, another American who’d moved abroad, delivered the entire passage and it is quite beautiful. I can’t find it online right now, but there are two or three different stories with Eisenman apparently giving different quotes and interpretations to what he was doing. The man’s an artist, so you just allow for that, I suppose.

The land is open for foot traffic, and our guide invited us to walk through the stelae and find our own interpretations. As you move into the heart of the field, the rest of the world seems to fall away. Except for the children. And on that you can be torn. Perhaps a little reflection or reverence is called for. But then, having read more from Eisenman, perhaps not. Perhaps those voices and that silliness are just as appropriate in this place. Hard to say. Abstract art.

This was my favorite spot:

The famed Brandenburg Gate:

The 18th-century neoclassical triumphal arch, one of the best-known landmarks of Germany, marks the site of a former city gate over the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg. It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace. Heavily damaged in World War II, and inaccessible since it stood next to the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate wasn’t fully restored until 2002. When we were there the area was being prepared for a soccer festival.

On top is the 1793 Quadriga of Victory. Napoleon took it during his occupation of Berlin in 1806, and it was returned in 1814. The olive wreath was joined by an Iron Cross after that, but the East Germans took that down — too Prussian it seems. It was restored after German reunification.

The Greek mythology frieze was part of the recent renovation:

This is inside Neue Wache, the New Guardhouse. The German Neoclassical building went up in 1816 as a as a guardhouse for the troops of the crown prince of Prussia. Since 1931 it has been a war memorial.

After reunification, the New Guardhouse became the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship.” Then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl suggested an enlarged version of Käthe Kollwitz‘s sculpture Mother with her Dead Son. The sculpture is directly under the oculus, and so is exposed to the rain, snow and cold, symbolizing the suffering of civilians during World War II.

Also, the moving light. We visited in the morning and again in the evening so I could repeat the shot:

Really changes things, doesn’t it?

Because we had the tickets and to get off our feet — see the title above — we cruised the Spree River that runs through the center of Berlin. I shot a video:

Another great day!

The first thing we did was walk by the Berlin Cathedral on Museum island. Nearby was where you purchase the Berlin pass, the package that gives you some transportation and admission to various attractions. We picked that up and caught a bus.

We got asked for our papers. (Seriously. The guy at the bus stop asked for my papers.) And by papers he meant the little bus pass.

So we drove around on a double decker bus and got a good overview of much of the city. This was a good idea. The first guide we had was a transplant from Chicago who would remind you of John Malkovich. He played ABBA songs. When it was time for his break we got another guide who was very German, and very much a prankster. We sat right next to him and he’d tell jokes in both languages over his speaker system and then wink and smile and whisper to me that he was kidding.

Among the sites was the Reichstag building:

It opened for business in 1894 and housed the Reichstag, or Imperial Diet. It was occupied until 1933 when it was damaged by fire and fell into disrepair until the 1960s with no real restoration made until after reunification. After that was finished in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the modern Bundestag. (Reichstag is the building, Bundestag is the parliamentary body.)

The glass dome is a big feature. It provides a complete view of the Berlin cityscape. Natural light radiates through the dome onto the parliament floor, but there’s an electronic sun shield blocking direct light. If you want to tour it you have to make reservations.

This is Bellevue Palace the official residence of the President of Germany:

It was built in 1786 as a summer residence for Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia.

The Konzerthaus Berlin is the home of Konzerthausorchester Berlin. The building was erected from 1818 to 1821 as a theater. It became a concert hall during World War II.

It was badly damaged during the war. In the 1970s they rebuilt it (the exterior historically faithful) and reopened in 1984. It features a pipe organ with 5,811 pipes. Acoustics Today considers it one of the top five venues in the world for musical and operatic performances.

If you want to amuse or bore your friends, ask them what the first western advertisement in East Berlin was. This Coke sign:

And we got asked for our papers.

After the bus circle got us oriented we went back to the Berlin Cathedral. I shot a video:

Berlin Cathedral is the short name for the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church in Berlin, Germany on Museum Island. The building was finished in 1905 and is a main work of Historicist architecture of the “Kaiserzeit.”

It has never been a cathedral in the actual sense because it has never been the seat of a bishop. The church’s community dates back to the 15th century.

Here’s more of the beautiful work inside. Click and scroll to move around your perspective. Please ignore the parts I messed up.

Here’s a still of the organ:

And a few shots of the altar:

At the Pergamon Museum, this is the Market Gate of Miletus (in western Greece). Built in the 2nd century AD, the gate was destroyed in an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century. Archeologists dug it up in the early 1900s, it was restored, rebuilt and placed here:

Here’s a model of Miletus to give you a sense of scale. See the gate in the background?

Also at the Pergamon, this is a portion of the famed Ishtar Gate. Click to embiggen:

This was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon, built about 575 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar II and excavated between 1902 and 1914. This reconstruction uses original bricks. It features bulls, the symbol of the weather god Adad and dragons, symbol of the city god Marduk.

The work on the gate continues right in front of you:

This is “Relief Depicting a River Town.” I shot it because I thought I might like a print. The marble dates to the second century. I’m intrigued by the cynicism of the signage. “Found allegedly in Apollonia-on-the-Rhyndacus” in northwestern Asia Minor:

This is a panel of the procession street into Babylon. The lions were the sacred animal of the goddess Ishtar.

Only a short segment was installed in the museum, but these are from the original fragments. The original was almost 80 feet wide. And what you can’t see from that first shot is that there is depth to the artwork:

This is the Fernsehturm, a television tower.

The tower was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the East Germans, something of an “Us too! Us too!” toward the administration of West Germany. At over 1,200 feet, it is the tallest structure in Germany and you can see it from most anywhere in Berlin. Also, there’s a revolving restaurant up there, too. There are more than two dozen stations broadcasting off the transmitter.

And, finally, bubbles:

But I’ll tell you about that on another day.