Leipziger Platz

Leipziger Platz is one of the three monumental gateway squares laid out with Berlin's 1734 customs and excise wall, alongside Pariser Platz at the Brandenburg Gate and Mehringplatz. Its unusual octagonal shape goes back to Frederick William I's expansion plans; in 1823 Karl Friedrich Schinkel completed the neoclassical gatehouses of the Potsdam Gate here. Before the war the adjacent Potsdamer Platz was Europe's busiest traffic junction, and Leipziger Platz itself was a smart commercial address anchored by the Wertheim department store. Bombing and the Wall effectively erased the quarter; until 1989 the square lay inside the death strip. Only after 1995 was the octagon strictly rebuilt to the original Prussian building lines, with the Mall of Berlin as the largest single block. Today Bundesrat, embassies and shopping mix here, and a line of paving stones marks the former course of the Wall.