Franziskaner-Klosterkirche

The Franciscan Monastery Church on Klosterstrasse in Berlin-Mitte is one of the city's oldest surviving buildings - its original walls date to 1250, when the Franciscans founded their so-called Grey Monastery, named after the brothers' grey habit. The adjoining cloister school taught such students as Otto von Bismarck, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the painter Adolph Menzel. In April 1945 the church burned out under Allied bombing and has stood as a ruin ever since, its massive brick rectangle thrusting raw into the sky. Instead of rebuilding, the city chose to preserve it as a memorial and open-air cultural space - summer brings concerts, sculpture shows and theatre performances. The brick Gothic of the apse counts as one of the most important surviving examples in Brandenburg.