Victory Column
Gilded sandstone column topped by a winged goddess, climbable to a viewing platform.
Location
About this audio guide
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.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Brandenburg Gate
Neoclassical triumphal arch crowned by a bronze chariot goddess, once seized by Napoleon.
Viktoria Park
Hilltop park with a man-made mountain waterfall and an iron war memorial atop the city's highest natural point.
Soviet War Memorial Treptow
Colossal bronze soldier cradling a child atop a broken swastika, above a mass grave of Red Army dead.
Reichstag Building
Neo-Renaissance parliament building bearing bullet scars and Soviet soldiers' graffiti beneath a modern glass dome.
Neue Wache
Neoclassical former royal guardhouse whose open oculus frames a grieving bronze mother and dead son.
Olympiastadion Berlin
Nazi-era Olympic stadium of soaring stone colonnades, still hosting matches beneath its historic bell tower.