St. Marienkirche

The St. Marienkirche dwarfed by the
Television Tower The St. Marienkirche (Church of St. Mary) is one of Berlin's oldest churches and one of the few genuine pre-war structures in the surrounding area. Although its exact age is not known, construction is though to have commenced around 1270 and the first written mention was in 1292. It was one of the six churches in the settlement of Cölln, Berlin's long-forgotten sister town.

The church's oldest parts are its granite base, upon which a hall church (Hallenkirche) in the "brick gothic" style (typical for many older public buildings in Berlin) stands. Its red bricks were the inspiration for the nearby Rotes Rathaus. The tower was added during the 15th century; the tower's Baroque / Neo-Gothic was added in 1790 by Carl Gotthard Langhans, the architect of the Brandenburg Gate.

The church was only lightly damaged during the Second World War and was fully restored by 1950. Originally it was surrounded by a dense mass of buildings, but those which survived the war were gradually demolished as part of the GDR's construction of a new city centre for East Berlin, and now the church stands in comparative isolation in one corner of a vast open space bounded by Alexanderplatz and theMarx-Engels Forum.

Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall) (0.2 km), Marx-Engels Forum (0.3 km), Television Tower (0.3 km), Ampelmann Shop in the DomAquarée (0.3 km), Kilkenny Irish Pub (0.3 km), Hackescher Markt (Station) (0.4 km), DDR Museum (GDR Museum) (0.4 km), Alexanderplatz (Station) (0.4 km), Hackesche Höfe (0.5 km)