page_title: Berlin Victory Column
section_title: Location and relocations
hierarchical_section_title: Berlin Victory Column / History, design, and influences / Location and relocations
caption_attribution_description: Berlin: Siegessäule This is a photograph of an architectural monument.It is on the list of cultural monuments of Berlin, no. 09050419
context_page_description: The Victory Column is a monument in Berlin, Germany. Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria and its German allies in the Austro-Prussian War and France in the Franco-Prussian War, giving the statue a new purpose. Different from the original plans, these later victories in the so-called unification wars inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, 8.3 metres high and weighing 35 tonnes, designed by Friedrich Drake. Berliners have given the statue the nickname Goldelse, meaning something like "Golden Lizzy".
  The Victory Column is a major tourist attraction in the city of Berlin. Its viewing platform, for which a ticket is required, offers a view over Berlin.
context_section_description: The Victory Column originally stood in Königsplatz (now Platz der Republik), at the end of the Siegesallee (Victory Avenue). In 1939, as part of the preparation of the monumental plans to redesign Berlin into Welthauptstadt Germania, the Nazis relocated the column to its present site at the Großer Stern (Great Star), a large intersection on the city axis that leads from the former Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace) through the Brandenburg Gate to the western parts of the city. 
  At the same time, the column was augmented by another 7.5 metres, giving it its present height of 66.89 metres. The monument survived World War II without much damage. The relocation of the monument probably saved it from destruction, as its old site – in front of the Reichstag, at exactly 1,500 metres (one Roman mile) from the proposed new north-south triumphal way of the Nazis in line with the Imperial Victory Avenue in the Tiergarten – was destroyed by American air raids in 1945.
  Surrounded by a street circle, the column is also accessible to pedestrians through four tunnels, built in 1941 to plans by Albert Speer who likewise increased the width of the road between it and the Brandenburg Gate and designed the new Germania which was scheduled for construction after the victory obtained in the war. Via a steep spiral staircase of 281 steps, the physically fit may, for a fee, climb almost to the top of the column, to just under the statue and take in the views over the Tiergarten including the Soviet War Memorial, 1946, in line with the Nazi proposed north-south triumphal way by Speer and Adolf Hitler.
caption: The statue of Victoria
  (cast by the Gladenbeck foundry, Berlin)
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