Unter den Linden

Unter den Linden, avenue in Berlin, Germany, lined with several of the city's grandest buildings and a number of embassies. The avenue, a straight line, connects two squares, Marx-Engels Platz on its eastern end and, on its western end, Pariser Platz, where the Brandenburg Gate is located. The name Unter den Linden, meaning under the linden, derives from the linden trees planted along the avenue in 1647 on the orders of Frederick William of Brandenburg, known as the Great Elector. At the time, the palace of the Prussian rulers (Honenzeilern Schloss) occupied the present Marx-Engels Platz, and Unter den Linden connected it to Tiergarten park, then a hunting ground.

The Zeughaus (arsenal), a Baroque building (see Baroque Art and Architecture) which now houses the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum), was constructed on the avenue between 1695 and 1706. In 1747, on the orders of Frederick the Great [see Frederick II (of Prussia)], Unter den Linden was widened into a parkway by German architect Georg Wenzelaus von Knobelsdorff, the architect of the Lindenoper, the opera house built on the avenue about the same time. Other public buildings on Unter den Linden include the Neue Wache (New guardhouse), a neoclassical structure by German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (see Neoclassical Art and Architecture), and the former palace of Prince Heinrich (brother of Frederick the Great), which, in 1810, became the headquarters of Friedrich Wilhelm University, renamed Wilhelm von Humboldt University in 1949.

Unter den Linden and most of its buildings were heavily damaged by Allied bombing during World War II (1939-1945), but several important structures on the avenue have since been restored. In 1949 the Soviet-controlled eastern sector of Berlin, containing the length of the avenue, was claimed as the capital of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The opera house was subsequently rebuilt, reopening in 1955 as the Deutsches Staatsoper (German state opera). The remains of the Hohenzollern palace were razed in 1950 and replaced with the Marx-Engels Platz, where statues of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were erected, as well as the Palast der Republik (palace of the republic). Between 1961 and 1989, Unter den Linden was cut off at the Brandenburg Gate by the Berlin Wall, which separated East and West Berlin. Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, the avenue has been revitalized by the reopening of several embassies and federal ministries and an influx of upscale commercial establishments and international business concerns.