Victory Column

This guide to the Victory Column in Berlin turns on 1945, when French soldiers pried four bronze relief panels from its base and carried them off to Paris as war trophies, panels that had once celebrated France's own defeat in the wars that forged a united German empire. You'll hear about sculptor Friedrich Drake's gilded goddess Victoria, nicknamed Goldelse by Berliners, and how Hitler's planners hauled the entire column to the Grosser Stern in 1938. Climb the 285 steps inside to the platform beneath her feet for a view over the Tiergarten.