VANISHED BERLIN: FROM THE CITY MOAT TO THE RAILWAY STATION

What is underneath Berlin's Bahnhof Alexanderplatz

Königsbrücke over the Königsgraben - with Königskolonnaden, currently standing in Berlin-Schöneberg at Kleistpark, on the left - in 1872. By 1880 the canal and the bridge would have vanished and been replaced by the elevated railway viaduct. Photo by Hermann Rückwardt. Image in public domain.

Unrecognisable today - and not, as so often is the case in Berlin, as a result of war damage but because of one of the most important construction projects in the nineteenth-century Berlin - the location of the former Königsgraben and Königsbrücke can still be seen nevertheless.

The Königsgraben was one of many Berlin canals and a remaining section of the city moat created as part of the seventeenth-century city fortifications known as Festung Berlin. Königsbrücke, the bridge that spanned it until Prussia decided to build the Berliner Stadtbahn, a railway line cutting through the city, stood along one of the main routes leading into Berlin - the road from the north-east and through the city gate known as Georgentor (later replaced by the Königstor, or “King’s Gate”).

The filling-in of the old canal captured by F.A Schwartz. Image in public domain.

So what happened to this bucolic urban landscape of the 1870s? The bridge was dismantled, the canal filled in (it was cheaper to build the new elevated railway line along the land - or in this case, body of water - that belonged to the city, rather than try to buy private plots and demolish private buildings), and by 1881-1882 one of Berlin’s best-known railway stations, Bahnhof Alexanderplatz, filled the room left by both.

Berlin’s Bahnhof Alexanderplatz in 1886, photo by F.A.Schwartz, Source: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek / Dietmar KatzPublic Domain Mark 1.0

Today, you can still guess where both the canal and the bridge used to be: the Königsgraben is right under the viaduct and the bridge used to be approximately where the passage under that viaduct is.