Berlin Cathedral Dom

Berlin Cathedral in the Mitte district, designed by Julius Carl Raschdorff, was built in 1894-1905 on the site of an earlier cathedral church dating from the time of Frederick the Great (1747-50, to a design by Johann Boumann the Elder). The building, in the New Baroque style, is divided into three main sections: in the north the dilapidated Memorial Church, in the south the Baptismal and Nuptial Church and in the center the Parish Church with 2,000 seats.

The very top of the dome is 74.8 m/245ft high and the oldest bell dates from 1532. This sacred building is 116 m/380ft high, 114 m/374ft long and 73 m/240ft deep, and was badly damaged in the war. After having been made safe, it took eight years of painstaking work between 1974 and 1982 to restore it fully. The interior renovation should have been completed by the end of 1993, but it is not expected that the restoration of the crypt and the great Sauer organ (113 stops) will be finished before 1995.

The Imperial Staircase, which has been open to the public again since July, 1989 (entrance on Lustgarten side), leads to the Parish Church and is decorated with bronze cornices and thirteen tempera paintings by the Berlin landscape painter Albert Hertel (1905), nine of which follow the theme of The Life of Christ. Some of these paintings were damaged and have been painstakingly restored or replaced by Ekkehard Koch. An exhibition on the stairs documents the "History of Berlin Cathedral". From the Imperial Gallery there is a view of the area below the dome.

Hohenzollern Crypt

Owing to restoration, the Hohenzollern Crypt is not at present open to visitors. It contains nearly 100 sarcophagi, coffins and monuments from the 16th-20th C., including those of the Great Elector and his wife Dorothea, Frederick I and his wife Sophie Charlotte (monument by Andreas Schlüter in the church below the South Gallery) and Frederick William II.