Cologne Cathedral

Cologne Cathedral (German: Kölner Dom, officially Hohe Domkirche St. Petrus, English: High Cathedral of St. Peter) is a Roman Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and is a World Heritage Site. It is Germany’s most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. 

Construction of Cologne Cathedral commenced in 1248 and was halted in 1473, leaving it unfinished. Work restarted in the 19th century and was completed, to the original plan, in 1880. It is 144.5 metres (474 ft) long, 86.5 m (284 ft) wide and its towers are approximately 157 m (515 ft) tall.  The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires and largest facade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height to width ratio, 3.6:1, of any medieval church. 

Cologne’s medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as “a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value” and “a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe“. 

The Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin.  The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip“) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified.  The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the “Wall of Shame“—a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt—while condemning the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

Heide Park Resort

 

The Heide Park Resort (German: Heide-Park Resort) is a theme park in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany. With an overall area of over 850,000 m² (210 acres), it is one of the biggest German amusement parks and the biggest in Northern Germany. The theme park is part of the British-based Merlin Entertainments. The current manager of the park is Hannes W. Mairinger.

 

Castle Road

The Castle Road (German: Burgenstraße) is a theme route in southern Germany (in Bavaria and Baden–Württemberg) and a small portion in the Czech Republic, between Mannheim and Prague.
It was established in 1954. In 1994 it was possible to extend it to Prague. It leads through the Neckar valley, the Hohenlohe Plateau, the Franconian Heights, Franconian Switzerland, the Fichtelgebirge and the Kaiserwald (Slavkovský les). The Castle Road has a length of over 1.000 Kilometers.

 

Eltz Castle

Burg Eltz is a medieval castle nestled in the hills above the Moselle River between Koblenz and Trier, Germany. It is still owned by a branch of the same family that lived there in the 12th century, 33 generations ago. The Rübenach and Rodendorf families’ homes in the castle are open to the public, while the Kempenich branch of the family uses the other third of the castle. The Palace of Bürresheim (Schloss Bürresheim), the Castle of Eltz and the Castle of Lissingen are the only castles on the left bank of the Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate which have never been destroyed.

 

Wartburg Castle

 

The Wartburg is a castle situated on a 1230-foot (410-m) precipice to the southwest of, and overlooking the town of Eisenach, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. In 1999 UNESCO added Wartburg Castle to the World Heritage List as an “Outstanding Monument of the Feudal Period in Central Europe”, citing its “Cultural Values of Universal Significance”. 

The castle’s foundation was laid about 1068 by the Thuringian count of Schauenburg,Louis the Springer, a relative of the Counts of Rieneck in Franconia. Together with its larger sister castle Neuenberg in the present-day town of Freyburg, the Wartburg secured the extreme borders of his traditional territories. 

 

 

Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum (German: Pergamonmuseum) is situated on the Museum Island in Berlin. The site was designed by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann and was constructed in twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. The Pergamon houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus, all consisting of parts transported from Turkey. There is controversy over the legitimacy of the acquisition of the collection. It was suggested that the collection should be returned to Turkey (original country of the excavations).

The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. The museum is visited by approximately 1,135,000 people every year, making it the most visited art museum in Germany (2007).

Movie Park Germany

The Movie Park Germany is a theme park with real movie studios in Bottrop-Kirchhellen. It consists of 6 areas based on the topic “fascination film”.

The park was opened in June 1996 as “Warner Bros. Movie World Germany” on the former location of the “Traumlandpark” amusement park, which had already replaced an earlier attraction called “Märchenwald”. During the time from 1992 to 1993, a short lived theme park called “Bavaria Filmpark” existed in this location as well. The laying of the cornerstone was in May 1994.

At the end of 1999, Warner Bros. sold the park to Premier Parks (now Six Flags). Premier Parks continued to license the Warner Bros. Movie World name. 

In 2004, the park was acquired by StarParks, a sub-group of Palamon Capital. This led to the name of the park being changed into “Movie Park Germany” in 2005, with the Warner Bros. theming removed from the park and replaced by newer themes from 20th Century Fox, MGM, and Nickelodeon.

In 2010, Parques Reunidos bought the park from Palamon Capital. No changes to the park’s name or theming occurred.

 

 

 

Reichstag

The Reichstag building (German: Reichstagsgebäude; officially: Plenarbereich Reichstagsgebäude) is a historical edifice in Berlin, Germany, constructed to house the Reichstag, parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire. After World War II, the building fell into disuse; the parliament (Volkskammer) of the German Democratic Republic met in the Palast der Republik in East Berlin, while the parliament (Bundestag) of the Federal Republic of Germany met in the Bundeshaus in Bonn.

The ruined building was made safe against the elements and partially refurbished in the 1960s, but no attempt at full restoration was made until after German reunification on 3 October 1990, when it underwent a reconstruction led by internationally renowned architect Norman Foster. After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament: the modern Bundestag.

The term Reichstag, when used to connote a parliament, dates back to the Holy Roman Empire. The building was built for the Reichstag of the German Empire, which was succeeded by the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. The latter devolved into the Reichstag of Nazi Germany, which left the building (and ceased to act as a parliament) after the 1933 fire and never returned; the term Reichstag has not been used by German parliaments since World War II. In today’s usage, the German word Reichstag (ImperialDiet Building) refers mainly to the building, while Bundestag (Federal Diet) refers to the institution.

 

 

 

Deutsches Museum (German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology)

The Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich, Germany,

is the world’s largest museum of technology and science,with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association of German Engineers as an initiative of Oskar von Miller. The full name of the museum in English is German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology (German: Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik). It is the largest museum in Munich.