Neue Wache

The Neue Wache is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic centre of Berlin. Erected from 1816 to 1818 according to plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a guardhouse for the Royal Palace and a memorial to the Liberation Wars, it is considered as a major work of Prussian Neoclassical architecture. A Victoria relief by Johann Gottfried Schadow and five General statues by Christian Daniel Rauch, referring to the Warrior statues on Schlossbrücke, also belong to the ensemble. Since 1993, the Neue Wache has been home to the "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny".
King Frederick William III of Prussia ordered the construction of the Neue Wache as a guardhouse for the Königliches Palais , his palace across the road, to replace the old Artillery Guardhouse. He commissioned Schinkel, the leading exponent of Neoclassical architecture, to design the building: this was Schinkel's first major commission in Berlin. The Neue Wache was inaugurated on 18 September 1818 by the Prussian 1st Guards Grenadiers on occasion of the official visit of Tsar Alexander I of Russia.