Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The broken spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is almost as iconic a symbol of Berlin as the Brandenburg Gate. The original church that stood here was constructed in the 1890s but it was severely damaged in World War II. Rather than remove the ruins to make room for a new church, they were preserved and incorporated into the design of the building that replaced it. The church stands on Kurfürstendamm, or simply Ku’damm, long the principal shopping boulevard of West Berlin, creating a vivid contrast between a reminder of the destructions of war and the bounty of peacetime prosperity.