Neue Wache

The Neue Wache stands in the heart of Berlin, a royal guardhouse that Karl Friedrich Schinkel completed in 1818. It is wheelchair accessible, and a portico of Doric columns carries a pediment sculpture by Johann Gottfried Schadow. Four massive corner risalits recall a Roman castrum, an influence behind Schinkel's Prussian Neoclassicism. The tympanum statuary shows Nike, the goddess of victory, honouring Prussia's part in the Napoleonic Wars.

Its purpose has shifted several times since the guardhouse years. Heinrich Tessenow redesigned the interior in 1931 as a war memorial, centring it on a black granite block and an oak wreath. Under the Nazis it hosted the Heroes' Memorial Day celebrations. After the Second World War, East Germany rededicated it to the victims of fascism and militarism. Since 1993 it has been the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny.

At the centre stands Käthe Kollwitz's pietà, Mother with her Dead Son, set beneath the oculus. Rain and snow fall through that opening onto the sculpture, so the weather itself joins the mourning. Inside, a building raised to guard a palace keeps watch over grief instead.