Mehringplatz

Mehringplatz marks the southern end of Friedrichstrasse in Berlin's Kreuzberg district and is one of the three famous round plazas laid out in the Baroque expansion of the Friedrichstadt in 1734. The square and all the surrounding buildings were completely destroyed in the Second World War; only the Peace Column by Christian Gottlieb Cantian, raised in 1843 to commemorate the Peace of Tilsit, survived at its centre. The present Mehringplatz was designed by Hans Scharoun in the 1960s as a ring of housing around concentric pedestrian paths and a car-free inner plaza - a clear statement of West Berlin post-war modernism that cites the baroque ground plan but reinterprets it. The square is now the setting for a difficult coexistence of social housing, drinkers' scene and urban-renewal debate. Step into it and you take in Friedrichstrasse, IBA-era infill, the column and the current renewal signs all at once.