Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
— — the broken tower the city kept on purpose.
Not only on a wall.
“A ruined neo-Romanesque spire standing on Breitscheidplatz, at the foot of the Kurfürstendamm in West Berlin. Built in 1895 to honour Kaiser Wilhelm I, gutted by Allied bombing on the night of 23 November 1943. After the war West Berlin chose to leave the shattered tower as it was, and in 1961 the architect Egon Eiermann set a new octagonal church beside it, walled in blue glass from Chartres. Berliners call the old tower the Hollow Tooth. from the studio
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche stands on Breitscheidplatz at the western end of the Kurfürstendamm, in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. The original church, designed by Franz Schwechten in a neo-Romanesque style, was consecrated on 1 September 1895 and rose to 113 metres at its tallest spire. It was struck by Royal Air Force incendiary bombs on the night of 23 November 1943 and largely destroyed. The ruined west spire, now 71 metres tall, was preserved as a memorial; the new ensemble by Egon Eiermann opened in 1961 with a freestanding hexagonal nave, a chapel, and a separate bell tower.
The interior of Eiermann's hexagonal nave is walled with more than 21,000 small stained-glass blocks made by Gabriel Loire in his Chartres workshop. Most are deep cobalt; the rest are red, green, yellow, and white. Seen from outside in daylight the walls read as a dark grey concrete grid. Seen from inside, with the sun behind them, the room turns the colour of a Chagall window, a slow even blue that holds in the corners of the nave long after the rest of the city has gone bright. Three services are held on Sundays; the hall is open to visitors daily.
The church stands directly above Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, one of West Berlin's principal interchanges, served by the U2 and U9 underground lines, the S5, S7, and S9 city rail lines, and dozens of bus routes. Entry to both the memorial hall, inside the ruined spire, and the new church is free. Opening hours run from 10:00 to 18:00 daily, with shorter hours on Sunday around services. The memorial hall holds a small museum of photographs from 1943 and the Cross of Nails, a gift from Coventry Cathedral, which was itself destroyed in a German raid in November 1940.