Neue Wache

Bezirk Mitte, Germany

Freely accessible

Public space — no opening hours to check.

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Wheelchair access: Accessible

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Standing on Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard, the Neue Wache is a Neoclassical guardhouse designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and erected from 1816 to 1818 to protect the Royal Palace and commemorate the Liberation Wars. A masterwork of Prussian Neoclassical architecture, it features a Victoria sculpture by Johann Gottfried Schadow in the pediment and five General statues by Christian Daniel Rauch referencing the warriors on nearby Schlossbrücke. Since 1931 it has housed Germany's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a First World War memorial; following German Reunification in 1993, it became the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic to the Victims of War and Tyranny. The building achieved fame for its changing of the guard ceremony, which persisted virtually unchanged through the twentieth century's political upheavals, though the modern iteration has abandoned the East German goose step while remaining otherwise faithful to its historical form.