This section will tell about one of the sights of the Kaliningrad region - seven survivors and some information about the completely destroyed gates, which at one time served as entrances to the city of Königsberg.
Zakheim gate
Sackheimer Tor is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt and Litovskiy Val.
The current building of the Zakheim Gate was built in the middle of the 19th century. However, the first gate on this site was built during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Königsberg at the beginning of the 17th century. Until the end of the 19th century, while the fortifications existed, the gates served as a checkpoint at the entrance to the city. After the ramparts were torn down, they lost their defensive function and became a kind of analogue of the triumphal arch. At the beginning of the 20th century, the gates were sold to the city by the military department. After that, part of the casemates was demolished and residential buildings were added to the gates.
After the Second World War, the gate was used as a warehouse, which function they performed until 2006. At the same time, the gate has the status of a historical monument of federal significance.
In 2006, the restoration of the gate began. After restoration, the gate will be transferred to the federal state institution "Center for Standardization and Metrology". It will house laboratories and a small museum, where you can see scales and other ancient measuring instruments.
Architecture
The Zakheim Gate has one archway. In the past, there were also smaller arches on the sides, which may have been pedestrian walkways, but they have not survived to this day. There are four towers at the corners of the gates: two round from the side of the city and octagonal from the outside. From the side of the city, the gate was decorated with high reliefs of Johann David Ludwig York and Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, from the outside - with the image of a black eagle (the Order of the Black Eagle was the highest award of Prussia).
Royal gate
Korolemvskie voromta is one of the seven preserved city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovskiy Val. In 2005, the Royal Gate was a symbol of the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad. Since the same year, the gate is a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. They contain an exposition dedicated to the visit to Koenigsberg by the Great Embassy of Peter I.
The gate is built in a pseudo-Gothic style and looks like a small castle.
German time
The current King's Gate inherited its name from an older gate located in the same place. These first gates were originally called Gumbinnen, since it was to Gumbinnen (now Gusev) that the road leading through them led. In 1811, the gate was renamed Royal, after the name of the street on which it was located (Koenigstrasse). The name of the street is due to the fact that the Prussian kings followed it, heading from the Königsberg castle to military reviews in the outskirts of Devau.
At the end of the first half of the XIX century in Königsberg, the modernization of city fortifications began. Then the old gates were demolished, and in their place were built new ones that have survived to this day.
Royal gate in the 19th century
The ceremonial laying of the new Royal Gate took place on August 30, 1843 in the presence of King Frederick William IV, and the construction was completed in 1850.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the fortifications, which included the Royal Gate, became obsolete, lost their military significance and were sold to the city by the military department. In 1910, the ramparts adjoining the gate on the sides were torn down. Thus, the gate became a free-standing, island structure. Now they served as a kind of triumphal arch.
It is not known whether the Royal Gate was used as a defensive structure during the assault on the city by Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War... At least in the chronicles of military operations and in the memoir literature, they are not mentioned.
The gate was damaged by artillery and bombing, but this does not mean that they were the target, because the entire city was subjected to shelling and bombing.
Soviet time
Nothing is known about the history of the gate from 1945 to 1960. The first official post-war document related to the Royal Gate is the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 1327 of August 30, 1960. This document established a list historical monuments cities taken for state protection.
However, the only consequence of this decision was that the gate was decorated with a sign "The monument is registered and protected by the state." No restoration or even conservation work was carried out at that time.
By that time, there was no longer a through passage through the gate.
For another fifteen years nothing happened in the history of the gate. They have not been restored, they have not been written about. The gate gradually collapsed.
In 1975, the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the Department for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture received the following letter, signed by the chairman of the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee V.V. Denisov:
The Kaliningrad City Executive Committee informs that the repair and conservation work at the "Royal Gate", located on the street Frunze - Litovskiy Val and which is an architectural monument of national importance, will be carried out in the coming years. In the future, this building will be adapted for the cultural needs of the city.
However, in reality, these good intentions did not cause any consequences. On the contrary, a new threat soon loomed over the gate:
“... We ask your permission, as they do not represent either historical or national value, to demolish the following sculptural images, high reliefs, bas-reliefs and medallions: a) sculptural images of Frederick I, Duke Albrecht and Ottokar II from the Royal Gate, b) medallions with images of generals from the Brandenburg Gate Astaire and Boyen and the coat of arms of Prussia ... ".
The author of this letter, sent to the State Inspectorate for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments in 1976, was a person who, according to his position, was supposed not to destroy, but to preserve cultural monuments, namely the head of the Culture Department of the Kaliningrad Regional Executive Committee V. K. Glushkov.
However, the Moscow experts did not give the go-ahead for the "trimming" of the gate.
In the same year, for the first time since the end of the war, the gates began to be used: they housed a bookstore.
In subsequent years, attempts by local authorities to destroy the gate did not stop. In the issue of January 8, 1978, the Kaliningradskaya Pravda newspaper wrote that the gate should have been demolished. It is unlikely that this article was an accident, since at about the same time the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee sent an official request to the Ministry of Culture and the Central Council of the All-Union Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments to remove state protection from the Royal Gate.
Fortunately, this time too, the initiative of the Kaliningrad authorities to destroy evidence of the pre-war history of the city did not meet with support in Moscow. The article from "Kaliningradka" caught the eye of the head of the Department for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR A. N. Kopylov, who sharply criticized the initiative.
In order to resolve the issue of the value of the Royal Gate, a special commission was sent to Kaliningrad by the Ministry of Culture. She worked in the city from 10 to 16 September 1978. As a result, the protected status of the gate was confirmed, and a letter was sent from the Ministry of Culture to Kaliningrad, which substantiated the historical and cultural significance of the gate, and a request to remove the status of a protected monument from them was refused.
By the beginning of perestroika, the bookstore at the gate had ceased to exist. They again became an ownerless structure, which no one looked after, and which gradually collapsed. For some time the gate was used as a warehouse.
As noted above, by 1991 the gate was abandoned. Over the next ten years, this position did not change, despite the fact that there were many options for their restoration and further use.
A turning point in the history of the gate was the celebration of the 750th anniversary of the city, which was celebrated in 2005. The Royal Gate became not only one of the many objects restored for the anniversary, it was this structure that became the main symbol of the anniversary.
The jubilee symbol was a silhouette of the gate against the background Russian flag with the words "Kaliningrad" and "750".
In the fall of 2004, 20 million rubles were allocated from the federal budget for the restoration of the gate, but then the cost more than doubled, to 49 million rubles.
The restoration work began in November 2004. By this time, the state of the gate left much to be desired, because it was damaged during the war and stood without maintenance for almost sixty years. The bas-reliefs were damaged: Frederick I, Duke Albrecht and Ottokar II had their heads beaten off
The course of the restoration of the gate was supervised at the very high level, since the organizing committee for the preparation of the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad was headed by the Minister of Economy of Russia German Gref. In February 2005, he announced that if by July 3 (the last day of the anniversary celebrations) the gate was not fully restored, then a "Royal Gallows" would be installed next to it for the officials responsible for the restoration.
However, it was not necessary to resort to such drastic measures: the gate was ready on time. Their opening after restoration took place on July 1.
The restoration of the bas-reliefs of the “three headless kings,” as they were called in Kaliningrad (although one of them, Albrecht, was not a king) presented particular difficulty. There was practically no documentation, and one could only judge how they looked before the war from photographs. It was extremely difficult to send the figures for restoration to Germany, where there is a large experience of such work, because of Russian laws, which provide for a complex procedure for obtaining a permit for the temporary export of cultural objects abroad. In this regard, it was decided to restore the figures on the spot.
To restore the figures, masters Aleksey Kadyrov and Sergei Bugaev, sculptors-restorers, who had previously restored the Singing Chapel named after V.I. Glinka in St. Petersburg. The leading restorer of the State Hermitage Vyacheslav Mozgovoy was also invited to restore the bas-reliefs.
The difficulty of the restoration was, among other things, that the figures were made of sandstone of a special breed, and a special composition had to be created to strengthen the heads.
There were some curiosities: when the heads were almost ready, detailed photographs of the figures were found in one of the Polish archives. The heads had to be redone. Now, in case the kings in the future, for some reason, lose their heads again, they can be replaced with spare ones.
On November 10, 2005, a message to the descendants was embedded in the wall of the Royal Gate - a glass case with the book “City of My Dreams”, from which Kaliningraders of the future will learn how their time seemed to the Kaliningraders of 2005. One of the entries in the book was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2, when he attended the anniversary celebrations.
The creation of a message to posterity was an initiative of the Museum of the World Ocean.
On February 10, 2005, the gate was handed over to the Museum of the World Ocean. It houses an exposition dedicated to the Great Embassy of Peter the Great to Europe.
Gate architecture
Like the rest of the gates of Königsberg, the Royal Gate was built in the neo-Gothic style, but it is in the Royal Gate that the style is most pronounced. The gate material is brick.
The Royal Gate consists of one passage 4.5 meters wide, on either side of which there are former casemates. From the side of the city, the casemates had windows and doors, and from the outside - embrasures. On the outer side of the gate was the so-called guardhouse - a courtyard that was shot from all sides.
The vertical division of the gate consists of three equally wide parts, two lateral parts of the division enclose the casemates, while the middle part belongs to the passage. The horizontal division is indicated by a cornice-belt that divides the gate into two tiers. The casemates are one tier high, the middle part of the gate (the part with a passage) rises above them to the height of one more tier. There are teeth on the edges of the roof of both the casemates and the central part. The tower is located at the four corners of the high central part. At the outer corners of the lower tier there are four of the same towers, thus the gate has eight towers. Now all eight towers look the same, but in the 19th century, the towers of the lower tier were in the form of turrets - stylized watchtowers. Most likely, the towers of the lower tier acquired their present appearance when the gates were rebuilt after they were sold to the city.
The first tier of the gate is decorated with three portals, the second - with three niches, in which are installed bas-reliefs of the King of Bohemia Ottokar II (left), King of Prussia Frederick I (middle) and Duke of Prussia Albrecht I (right). Their family coats of arms are placed under the figures. Above the niches are the coats of arms of the Prussian lands - Samland and Natangia.
The front walls are two meters thick, the vaults are 1.25 meters. Thus, the walls of the gate could withstand the shelling of the then artillery. The coverings of the tiers and the overlap between the tiers are made in the form of a system of cross vaults. Since these vaults caused a strong thrust, buttresses were arranged on the side edges of the gate.
During its existence, the architecture of the gate has undergone changes. Back in 1875, the northern casemate was converted into a pedestrian passage, later the same thing happened with the southern casemate. After the sale of the gates to the city, the guardhouse and some other elements necessary for the defensive structure, but unnecessary for the gate, the triumphal arch, were demolished. The end faces of the gates were rebuilt, which styles are visible after the shaft has been ripped off.
The gate as a possible place to hide lost cultural property
During the war, cultural values stolen by German troops from museums, archives, libraries and churches of the Soviet Union were sent to Königsberg. In the spring of 1945, these valuables, together with valuables from Königsberg museums and other cultural institutions, were buried in various hiding places. Often such caches were set up in fortifications.
There are versions that the values were hidden in the gates of Koenigsberg, including the Royal ones.
Most of the expedition's searches were focused on the Rostgarten Gate, as there was other evidence that valuables were hidden there. Searches were mostly limited to visual inspection of the premises. The expedition did not have its own instruments; they used instruments borrowed from a military engineering school. Although these instruments were not designed for such use, the search engines had no choice.
Rossgarten gate
The Rossgarten Gate is one of the seven preserved city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Chernyakhovsky and Alexander Nevsky streets, next to Vasilevsky square and the Amber Museum.
The current building of the gate is located in the place where the gate of the same name was located, which belonged to the first rampart fortification of the city (early 17th century).
The building of the gate that has survived to this day was built in 1852-1855 according to the project of the Hauptmann Engineer and the director of the fortress building Irfügelbrecht and the Lieutenant Engineer von Heil in Königsberg. The facade of the gate was designed by the secret Supreme Construction Councilor August Stühler, head of the Technical Construction Deputation in Berlin. The author of the sculptural decorations is Wilhelm Ludwig Sturmer.
The first project of the gate was developed in 1852 by the fortress department in Königsberg. This draft was significantly revised by Privy Councilor Stühler. Stühler himself worked out the project of the facade, giving it pronounced Gothic forms.
After the war, the gate was restored and began to be used as a cafe-restaurant "Sunny Stone".
Architecture
The gate has only one passage, four meters wide. There are three casemates on both sides of the passage. Thus, the facade of the gate consists of seven openings. From the side of the city the casemates have windows, from the outside - embrasures.
Above the facade of the gate, there is a row of battlements, divided into two halves by an elevated central part. On the sides, the central part is framed by two high octahedral turrets, which end with decorative machicules. Between the turrets, there is a high arch leading to the actual entrance to the gate. Above the arch there is an observation platform, fenced with battlements. To the right and to the left of the arch are arcades consisting of arches resting on columns.
On either side of the main arch are two medallion-portraits depicting the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
While the city side of the gate is beautifully decorated, the outside has no ornamentation. From the outside, the passage is covered by a blockhouse, from which it is possible to conduct circular rifle and artillery fire, and a guardhouse, from the embrasures of which it was possible to conduct frontal and flanking fire. The guardhouse had swing gates. In front of the guardhouse there was a moat, through which a drawbridge was thrown.
Ausfalsk gate
The Ausfal Gate (also: exit gate, from German Ausfalstor, gates for sorties) is one of the seven preserved city gates of Kaliningrad. They are located in the south-western corner of the intersection of Gvardeisky Prospekt and Gornaya Street, in the immediate vicinity of the 1200 Guards Monument.
Of all the surviving gates, Ausfal was rebuilt to the greatest extent.
The first gates were built approximately on the site of the present ones in the 1720s, during the construction of a defensive rampart around the city. Later, in 1866, the gate was rebuilt in the brick Gothic style. Built in the 19th century, the Ausfal Gate allowed only pedestrians to pass, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by the poorer architectural design). The new Ausfal Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Astaire.
The gate from the very beginning cut into the shaft and was actually below ground level. In the XX century, the only passageway of the gate was laid. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold to the city by the military.
During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior gates were divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed by sealed protective doors.
After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for a nearby police school, and later a sewage collector was located.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located flush with the level of the carriageway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died in the storming of Konigsberg.
In the spring of 2007, the Ausfal and Railway Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad History and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates, and place museum expositions in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.
Architecture
The Ausfal Gate has only one passage, to which a staircase and a rather narrow bridge led from the outside (traces of which have survived to this day), which confirms that only pedestrians were allowed through the gate. On the sides of the passage there are casemates with embrasures for frontal and flanking fire. The passage is blocked along an arc by an arched arch, which is decorated with a casing with teeth. The lateral outer walls of the gate opening into the moat are faced with granite slabs decorated with rustic patterns in the quadra style.
A battle platform with a toothed parapet is located above the passage.
O appearance the inner (facing the city) facade of the gate is unknown, since He was covered with earth, and his photographs or drawings have not survived.
Railway gate (Kaliningrad)
The railway gate is one of the seven preserved city gates of Kaliningrad. The gate is located under the carriageway of Gvardeisky Avenue, next to the monument to 1200 guardsmen. There is a footpath through the gate leading to the park behind the monument.
On the gate, there is an inscription with the date of its construction - 1866-1869. It is located on the castle stone of the gate. The Railway Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Astaire (who is also the author of the project of the Ausfal Gate).
Passed through this gate Railway leading to Pillau (now - Baltiysk). After the defensive structures of the city center were removed, Deutschordenring Street (now - Gvardeisky Prospect) was laid along the former rampart. Thus, since then, the gate is hardly noticeable, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.
After the Second World War, traffic on the railroad passing through the gate ceased as a new branch line was built. Still rails from old road persisted until the end of the nineties.
Later, a footpath was laid along the track of the former railway, which leads from Moskovsky Prospekt through the Zheleznodorodnye Vorota to the park behind the monument to 1200 guardsmen.
In the spring of 2007, the Zheleznodorozhny and Ausfal Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad History and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates, and place museum expositions of military-historical themes in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.
Architecture
The railway gates have two spans, decorated with lancet arches. The portals of the gates are decorated with vason figured bricks. On the sides of the arches there are casemates with embrasures. On the outside of the gate there is a guardhouse with powerful embrasures.
The gate ends with parapets with forged lattice, which enclose the Guards Avenue passing along the gate.
A feature of the gate are the so-called strikes. They represent vertical double square cross-section, arranged in the walls of the arches. In case of defense, strong beams should be laid from them. The fence formed in this way resembled blinds. It was impossible to disassemble the punches from the outside.
Other railway gates in Königsberg
There were other railway gates in Königsberg. The first ones were built after 1853, they were located next to the Brandenburg Gate. The railway leading to Berlin passed through this gate. There were also several other railway gates. All of them were demolished by the twenties.
Brandenburg Gate (Kaliningrad)
The Brandenburg (Berlin) Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located on Bagration Street. The Brandenburg Gate is the only city gate in Kaliningrad that is still used for its intended purpose.
The Brandenburg Gate was built in Königsberg in 1657 on the southwestern section of the First rampart at its intersection with the road leading to the Brandenburg castle (now the village of Ushakovo). For lack of Money and the corresponding project, the organizers limited themselves to the construction of a wooden gate, placed under the roof and resting on the earthen rampart. For reliable cover, a ditch was dug in front and filled with water.
A hundred years later, by order of the Prussian king Frederick II, the dilapidated building was broken, and in its place a massive brick building was erected with two spacious passages with a lancet end. New strong gates completely blocked the road to the south (now Suvorov Street) and served as a reliable defense of the city. Thick walls well covered a small garrison of sentries, who were housed in the inner casemates. There were also service, utility, storage rooms and lifts. During the restoration work in 1843, the gate was significantly rebuilt (almost rebuilt in the same place) and decorated with pointed decorative pediments, cruciform sandstone flowers, stylized leaves on tops, coats of arms and medallions. On the gates there are sculptural portraits of Field Marshal Boyen (1771-1848), the Minister of War, a participant in the reforms in the Prussian army; on the right - Lieutenant General Ernst von Aster (1778-1855), chief of the engineering corps, one of the authors of the Second Shaft Fortification.
The Brandenburg Gate is the only one of the Königsberg Gate that has survived to this day, performing its former transport function. The building has been restored and is protected by the state as architectural monument decorating Bagration Street in Kaliningrad.
Architecture
The gate has two driveways. Although all the gates built in the middle of the 19th century in Königsberg belonged to the neo-Gothic style, the Gothic motifs are especially pronounced in the Brandenburg Gate. The arrow-shaped pediments stand out, which give the essentially low building a sense of height. The gate is richly decorated with decorative elements such as high reliefs and stylized stone flowers.
Friedland gate
The Friedland Gate is one of the seven preserved city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Kalinin Avenue and Dzerzhinsky Street, adjacent to the Yuzhny Park ( former park 40th anniversary of the Komsomol). There is a museum at the gate.
The name of the gate is associated with the city of Friedland, present-day Pravdinsk. The first Friedland Gate was built in the 17th century, but it was not located on the site of the current one.
The now preserved Friedland Gate became the last gate of Königsberg (that is, it was built last). The exact date of their construction is unknown, the approximate dates are 1857-1862. It is also unknown who their architect was. At the beginning of the 20th century, the obsolete and lost military significance of the gates, along with the entire second rampart, were sold to the city by the Ministry of War. Then the movement of transport through them was stopped, since part of the defensive rampart that had become unnecessary was torn down, and the road to Friedland (current Dzerzhinsky street) began to pass on the side of the gate.
After the war, the gates were empty for a long time, then a warehouse was located in them. In the late 1980s, work was carried out in South Park to clear the area and clean up the bottom of the park's numerous ponds. During these works, many old items were found. Soon, a museum was organized at the gate, the basis of the collection of which were the objects found in the park.
Architecture
Like all gates of Königsberg, the Friedland Gate was built in the neo-Gothic style. The name of the author of the project is unknown, sometimes authorship is attributed to Shtuhler.
The facade of the gate from the side of the city is divided into six parts by five buttresses. The buttresses end with gabled, gabled decorative turrets that protrude above the decorative parapet with battlements. All external openings of the gates (driveways, windows, doors) are made in the form of pointed arches and are decorated with perspective portals.
The two central parts of the gate are occupied by driveways. The dimensions of the driveways are 4.39 m wide and 4.24 m high. Parts at the edges are occupied by casemates.
The surface of the facade of the gate is decorated, as it were, with a net, which is a rhombic ornament. The "threads" of this mesh are made of bricks of a different color.
The facade of the gate was decorated with a statue of the great commander Friedrich von Zollern, which has not survived (disappeared after the war). Another statue, depicting Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, is located on the outside of the gate. This statue has survived, but its head is beaten off. On the outside of the gate there is a guardhouse.
The Museum at Friedland Gate was founded by Alexander Georgievich Novik (1956-2001). Initially, the museum was actually private and did not have an official status. Only in 2002, the museum was officially established by order of the director South Park... The museum was formally opened on October 22, 2002.
The basis of the museum's exposition is the items found during the cleaning of the park and its reservoirs. In the museum you can see old bottles, dishes, household items, cart and coach wheels, etc. Another exhibition tells about the fortifications of Koenigsberg.
In 2007, the museum took second place in the fourth all-Russian competition “a changing museum in a changing world”. Four hundred museums took part in this competition, the Friedland Gate was second only to the Tretyakov Gallery. The prize money will be used to modernize the museum.
The unpreserved city gates of Kaliningrad
In addition to the seven city gates that have survived to this day, there were other gates in Königsberg, now lost.
Tragheim gate
The Tragheim Gate was located in the area of the present Victory Square. They were demolished in 1910, after the defensive structures of the second bypass became obsolete, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.
Steindamm gate
As well as Tragheim gates, these gates were located in the area of the present Victory Square. They were demolished in 1912.
Hollanderbaum
These gates were located at the intersection of the current General Butkov Street and Marshal Bagryamyan Embankment, next to the two-tiered bridge across the Pregolya. The gate was named after the area in which it was located (Hollanderbaum, "Dutch tree"). There was a railway station with the same name nearby. The gate was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century.
Now it's time to explain why the title of the post mentions the gate.
In 1626 - 1634, a rampart fortification was erected, which surrounded Königsberg from all sides. The fortification consisted of several bastions and half-bastions, as well as 9 gates. In addition, from the side of the sea in 1657, the powerful fort of Friedrichsburg was laid.
And already two centuries later, King Frederick William IV issued a decree on the beginning of the construction of the Second rampart fortification, generally repeating the contours of the previous one. The powerful towers of Don and Wrangel, the Kronprinz defensive barracks and the Astronomical Bastion are being built, and new fortified gates are being erected on the site of the previous ones. The first in 1843 began to build the Royal Gate, and the construction was completed with the construction of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
We did not manage to visit all the gates: (But I will show you some of them :)
Brandenburg Gate
There is a commemorative plaque on the wall.
And here are the doors themselves. A tram line runs through them.
The Brandenburg Gate was built around 1860. The facade was designed by the architect August Stühler. On the side facing the city, two portrait medallions of the sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stümler have survived: on the left - the military engineer Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen, on the left - General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, a participant in the Napoleonic wars and the author of the second rampart fortification of the Konigsberg fortress. The name of the gate can be interpreted in two ways: first, the road to the Order's castle Brandenburg (now the village of Ushakovo) goes through them; second, the same road leads to the German state of Brandenburg. But they have nothing to do with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
which of them is a field marshal, and who is a general, I'm confused)) 
This is a view of the gate from the other side. By the way, pay attention to the tram line - it is a narrow gauge railway. And the trams run of quite ordinary dimensions. According to my feelings, it shakes on the way twice as much as in Moscow :)
A bit from the history of the Koenigsber tram. In the 19th century, due to the growth of the city, there was a need for public transport... In May 1881, the first horse tram route was opened in Königsberg (in the same year an electric tram was launched in Berlin). The owners of the horse tram were joint stock companies. Compared to a droshky, the cost of a horse car ride was much more democratic: from 10 to 20 pfennigs (depending on distance) versus 60 pfennigs for one passenger, 70 pfennigs for two, 80 for three, and marks for four passengers in a droshky.
And in May 1895, the first trams entered the streets of Königsberg. In 1901, the city bought all the tram lines (with the exception of the lines in Hufen) and began to electrify them.
The strange structure ahead is the bridge.
The next gate is Friedrichsburg. 
Friedrichsburg Gate - the only one historic gate in Kaliningrad, which led not to the city of Konigsberg, but to the fortress of the same name. In 1657, at the direction of the great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, the Friedrichsburg fortress was built on the southern bank of the Pregolya River. It was built according to the project of Christian Otter and in topographic plan had the shape of a square. At its corners there were four bastions with euphonic names - Ruby, Emerald, Diamond and Pearl. In a quadrangular courtyard, surrounded by earthen ramparts, there were various buildings: the commandant's office, barracks, zeighaus, barns, a guardhouse, a prison and a church.
During the stay in 1697 of the Great Russian Embassy in Königsberg under the name of the sergeant Peter Mikhailov, the Russian Tsar Peter I underwent artillery science in the Friedrichsburg and Pillau fortresses. The training was conducted by the Brandenburg specialist in this field, Colonel von Sternfeld. He noted the abilities of his 25-year-old student. Upon his return to Moscow, Peter I received a certificate, which said: "Peter Mikhailov should be recognized and honored for a careful and skillful fire-shooting artist who is perfect in throwing bombs."
In the middle of the 19th century, with the construction of new rampart fortifications around Königsberg, the Friedrichsburg fortress was rebuilt into the fort of the same name. In 1852, a brick gate was erected at Fort Friedrichsburg. The author of the project of this gate was August Stühler, the court architect of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. On August 23, 1910, the Friedrichsburg fort was excluded from the Königsberg defensive fortifications and sold to the Imperial Railway. The ramparts were dug down, the ditches of the Friedrichsburg fort were filled up. The main part of its structures has been dismantled. Railroad tracks were laid through the territory previously occupied by this fort. From the buildings of the fort, only the gate and the barracks at the eastern defensive wall southeastern bastion.
Now the Friedrichsburg Gate has been transferred to the Museum of the World Ocean.
Some tiny hatches))
Bridge. This strange design is a spreading mechanism, or rather a lifting one :) The new railway bridge was built in 1926. Its structure was rotatable, the upper part of the bridge was intended for trains, the lower one for pedestrians and cars. The turning part was 57 meters and weighed 1225 tons, while the bridge could be turned within 2-3 minutes. It was blown up during the retreat of German troops and rebuilt in 1949. The bridge design was changed to a lifting one. The lifting height of the bridge is about 50 meters.
The bridge is in such a ... neglected and picturesque state. My friends were even afraid to cross it over rusted metal. And I remembered my home and the stairs on the Embankment)) 
The views from the bridge are very even! 
Maybe some old bridge piles?
The Cathedral is visible in the distance.
Kitty looks at the guests of the city somehow unkindly :)
"Rock Garden" in one of the courtyards :)
Here I am most pleased with the pink "toy" house)
The building on the right is also very interesting. 
This is the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - a police university. Constructed building approx. 1931, in german time the labor exchange was located here.
Railway gate 
1866-1869 The Railway Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Astaire.
The railway leading to Pillau (now - Baltiysk) passed through these gates. After the defenses of the city center were removed, a street was laid along the former rampart. Thus, since then, the gate is hardly noticeable, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.
There is an unexpected sign on the gate)))
Outside the gate beautiful park with ponds. 
And this is the Ausfalsk Gate.
The first gates were built approximately on the site of the present ones in the 1720s, during the construction of a defensive rampart around the city. Later, in 1866, the gate was rebuilt in the brick Gothic style. Built in the 19th century, the Ausfal Gate allowed only pedestrians to pass, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by the poorer architectural design). The new Ausfal Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Astaire.
The gate from the very beginning crashed into the rampart and was actually below ground level. In the XX century, the only passageway of the gate was laid. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold to the city by the military.
During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior gates were divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed by sealed protective doors.
After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for a nearby police school, and later it housed a sewage collector.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located flush with the level of the carriageway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died in the storming of Konigsberg.
Konigsberg was surrounded by seven bastion fronts, i.e. edges of a polygonal fortress belt, with the inclusion of bastions with an earthen rampart connecting them. Lunettes, cavaliers, redoubts and individual reduits, built into the rampart and carried out beyond it, were to become auxiliary defensive structures. The system also included water-fed ditches, both Pregel branches and other reservoirs. The separate elements of the defensive bypass were the gates.
All the city gates of Konigsberg were locked at night and a guard was posted. Entry into the city from dusk to dawn was prohibited. The only exceptions were doctors and priests.
Gate construction history
On April 5, 1843, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm the fourth, ordered the creation of a Second rampart fortification around Konigsberg. The project was assigned to the head of the engineering corps, Lieutenant General Ernest Ludwig von Astaire.
Ludwig von Astaire, developing the project of the Second rampart fortification of the city of Konigsberg, took into account not only the military purpose of the gate, but also the aesthetic one. All city gates were made in one of the directions of the English neo-Gothic - the Tudor style. Special attention was paid to the sculptures that adorned them.
Construction of the city gate began on August 30, 1843 from the bookmark of the Royal Gate. King Frederick William the Fourth himself took part in this event. The construction was completed with the consecration of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
At the end of the 19th century, the construction of a fort belt "Konigsberg's Night Feather" began, which was carried out at a considerable distance from the city's borders.
The second rampart fortification of the city of Konigsberg lost its military significance.
A decree of August 25, 1910 ordered to exclude a number of defensive structures from the fortification system, including the city gates of Konigsberg.
During World War II, many city gates of Konigsberg (Kaliningrad), were partially damaged.
In the post-war years, they were not even considered as an architectural monument and vegetated in abandonment and oblivion. Some were given for a vegetable warehouse, others for workshops. This continued until 1960, when, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, they were still declared to be under state protection.
But the main revival of the city gate of Königsberg took place in 2004. Then, for the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad, the Royal Palaces were restored.
Now these are seven sights of the city. In some gates there are museum expositions, in others there are cozy cafes.
Royal
Royal Gate (German Königstor) located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovskiy Val. Originally, this place was the Kalthof gate.
In 1717, they were demolished, and during the entry of Konigsberg into Russia, they were rebuilt on this place by Russian engineers.
These gates were originally called Gumbinnenskie, since it was to Gumbinnen (Gusev) that the road leading through them led. In 1811, the gate was renamed into the Royal, after the name of the street on which it was located (German: Königstrasse).
At the end of the first half of the 19th century, modernization of city fortifications began in Königsberg. Then the old gates were demolished, and in their place were built new ones that have survived to this day.
Solemn the laying of the new Royal Gate took place on August 30, 1843 in the presence of King Friedrich-Wilhelm 4, and the construction was completed in 1850.
Koenigsberg built in a pseudo-gothic style and outwardly resemble a small castle. The author of the gate project is General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, the architect Friedrich August Stüler was responsible for the decoration of the facades, the bas-reliefs were created by the sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.
Royal gate consist of one passageway 4.5 meters wide, on either side of which there are casemates. From the side of the city, the casemates had windows and doors, and from the outside there were embrasures.
The edges of the roof are framed by battlements. In the corners of the building there are four octahedral turrets (in old drawings the turrets are round), and four more octahedral turrets are located on the high central part of the Royal Gate.
The facade from the side of the city is decorated with bas-reliefs of the King of Bohemia Ottokar 2 (left), King of Prussia Frederick 1 (middle) and Duke of Prussia Albrecht 1 (right). Their family coats of arms are placed under the figures. Above the niches are the coats of arms of the Prussian lands - Samland and Natangia.
At the end of the 19th century, gross fortifications lost their defensive functions, and at the beginning of the 20th century Royal gate were sold by the Ministry of War to the city government.
Later, in the 20th century, the ramparts that adjoined the side of the gate were torn down as they obstructed the increased traffic. Thus, they became a free-standing, island structure. Now they serve as a kind of triumphal arch.
During the Great Patriotic War, during the bombing of the city, the gates were slightly damaged.
After the war, the Royal Gate was used as the No. 6 bookstore, which closed in the nineties of the last century. After they were used as a warehouse.
In 2004, restoration work began, during which the building of the Royal Gate was completely restored, and their lost heads were returned to the bas-reliefs of Friedrich 1, Duke Albrecht 1 and Ottokar 2.
In 2005, the Royal Gates became a symbol of the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad.
On November 10, 2005, a message to descendants was embedded in the wall of the Royal Gate - a glass case with the book "City of My Dreams". One of the entries in the book was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2.
Since 2005, the Royal Gate has been a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. Here is an exposition dedicated to the visit to Konigsberg by Peter 1.
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| From the city side | main facade |
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| bas-reliefs | From the outside s |
Rosgarten
Rossgärter Tor located at the intersection of Chernyakhovsky (Wrangels) and Alexander Nevsky (Cranzer Allee) streets, next to Vasilevsky square and the Amber Museum.
The first gate, which was located on this site, was built at the beginning of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Konigsberg. 
In 1852-1855, according to the project of the director of the fortification Irfügelbrecht and the engineer-lieutenant von Heil, new, more modern ones were built on the site of the first city gate.
The facade of the gate was designed by the secret Supreme Construction Councilor August Stühler, head of the Technical Construction Deputation in Berlin. Stuhler himself worked out the project of the facade, giving it pronounced Gothic forms. The author of the sculptural decorations is Wilhelm Ludwig Sturmer.
Rossgarten gate have only one passage four meters wide. There are three casemates on both sides of the passage. In this way facade of the Rossgarten gate consists of seven openings. From the side of the city, casemates have windows, from the outside of the city there are embrasures. Above the facade of the gate, there is a row of battlements, divided into two halves by an elevated central part.
On the sides, the central part is framed by two high octahedral turrets. Above the entrance there is an observation deck, fenced with battlements. To the right and to the left of the entrance are arcades consisting of arches resting on columns. On either side of the main arch are two medallion-portraits depicting the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
From the outside, the passage is covered with a blockhouse, from which it is possible to conduct circular rifle and artillery fire, and a guardhouse, from the embrasures of which it was possible to conduct frontal and flanking fire. The guardhouse had swing gates. In front of the guardhouse there is a moat over which a drawbridge is thrown.
After the war Rossgarten gate were restored and began to be used as a cafe-restaurant "Solnechny Kamen".
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| From the outside | From the city side |
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| Rossgarten gate | Scharnhorst portrait medallion | medallion-portrait of Gneisenau |
Zachheim
Sackheim Tor located at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt and Litovskiy Val Street. The first gate, which was located on this site, was built at the beginning of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Konigsberg. 
Construction Zakheim gate, which has survived to our time, was built in the middle of the 19th century.
They have one passage in the form of an arch, which served as a checkpoint at the entrance to the city.
The gate building was built in the neo-Gothic style of red bricks of varying degrees of fire. Walls and decorative details are also made of it. There are four towers at the corners of the gates: two round from the side of the city and two octahedral from the outside. From the side of the city they were decorated with bas-reliefs of Johann David Ludwig York and Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, from the outside - with the image of a black eagle.
At the end of the 19th century, gross fortifications lost their defensive functions, and at the beginning of the 20th century Zakheim gate were sold by the Ministry of War to the city administration, and they were left as an architectural monument, in the form of a triumphal arch. Some of the casemates were demolished and residential buildings were added to the gates. Transport, which was allowed near the gates, stopped walking through them, disrupting a significant part of the defensive rampart.
During the Second World War, the gate was not damaged. After the war, they began to be used as a warehouse, which function they performed until 2006.
In 2006, the restoration of the gate began. The Zakheim Gate was supposed to house the federal state institution "Center for Standardization and Metrology", its laboratories and a small museum, where you can see scales and other ancient measuring devices.
On the this moment(April 2011), no work is underway, and we can only dream of a museum.
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| From the city side | From the outside |
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| From the city side | From the outside |
Friedland
On the outskirts of the city, not far from the stockyard, at the exit from Austrian Street (Kalinin Avenue), and at its intersection with Schönfisserallee Street (Dzerzhinsky Street), a rampart with a gate was built to cover the city from the south, along the road that led to the city Friedland (Pravdinsk). 
The first mention of Friedland Gate (German: Friedländer Tor) refers to 1657, it was in this year that Prussia freed itself from vassal dependence on the part of Poland.
The defensive structures were well equipped with artillery, but these fortifications were seriously tested only during the Napoleonic wars. An attempt by the French to take Konigsberg outright failed, but this fact is an exception, since the first roll ring proved to be ineffective when the enemy attacked.
And already in 1857-1862, the construction of a new second defensive ring around the city began. The old ones were dismantled and new ones were built in their place in 1862, and they were the most fortified in the system of the second shaft ring. The Friedland Gate was built under the direction of the architect F.A.Stühler (1800-1865).
The Friedland Gate is made in the neo-Gothic style of red bricks of varying degrees of firing. Walls and decorative details are also made of it. The gate had a large number of casemates with windows and embrasures. They had a scarp wall (the inner wall of the rampart) with a patrol path behind it. This wall runs along the park and has survived to this day.
The casemates of the gates had not only rifle embrasures, but also cannon embrasures. The gates had two passages with lancet-shaped portals, and the portals had platbands repeating their shapes. The front part of the gate from the side of the city is dissected vertically by five buttresses, ending at the level of the decorative crenellated parapet with pointed gable turrets - pinnacles with phials. There are only three such turrets on the outside of the gate.
The turrets and parapet teeth are decorated with decorative niches with multi-blade and two-center arches to create chiaroscuro and greater architectural expressiveness. Under the jagged parapet, there is an ornament of repeating crosses, which are called bezant in ancient architecture. 
From the side of the city, the gate was decorated with the figure of Friedrich von Zollern, who at the beginning of the 15th century was the commander of the Balga fortress. On the outside of the gate is the image of the fifteenth Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen.
The author of the sculptures is Wilhelm Ludwig Sturmer (1812-1864). The date of creation of the sculptures, discovered during the restoration, is 1864.
Currently, the sculptures have been restored (sculpture by Feuchtwangen in 2005, sculpture by Zollern in 2008).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Friedland gate they wanted to demolish, but the gates, along with the entire second rampart, were sold by the Ministry of War in 1910 to the city administration, and they were left as an architectural monument.
After the First World War, the Friedland Gate is closed to traffic and becomes the entrance gate to the park, which was created on the site of the defensive structures of the southern front. And the road to Friedland (present-day Dzerzhinsky street) began to pass along the side of the gate, while part of the defensive rampart was demolished.
During the Second World War, the Friedland Gate had to become a military target. Upstairs there are still traces of trenches and holes for artillery pieces. During the assault on the city in 1945, the gate was practically not damaged. That cannot be said about the Soviet period. In the post-war period, the gates were empty for a long time, then a warehouse was located in them. Unique ceramic bricks were repeatedly whitewashed, painted, trees sprouted on the roof of the gate, and as a result, the gate collapsed.
In 1988 Friedland gate were transferred to the park named after "40th anniversary of the Komsomol" (now Yuzhny Park). Thanks to donations from private individuals and public organizations, the Friedland Gate was restored and the Museum of East Prussia was opened there. 
During the cleaning of the park's ponds, various objects were found, which made up the first exposition of the museum. Here you can find a collection of weapons of the 19th - 20th centuries, a collection of wine and beer bottles, blacksmith and carpentry tools, bricks with animal paw prints and brands of craftsmen.
Museum at Friedland Gate founded by Alexander Georgievich Novik. Initially, the museum was actually private and did not have an official status. Only in 2002 was the museum officially established by order of the director of South Park.
Now the Friedland Gate Museum is the only municipal museum in Kaliningrad, the exposition of which is dedicated to the history of pre-war Konigsberg.
Permanent exhibitions of the museum:
“Fortress city, garden city. A virtual walk through the streets of old Königsberg ": an opportunity to see what the city was like in the 1895-1910s, look into the shop windows.
"Konigsberg of the first half of the 20th century": the life of the townspeople in the first half of the 20th century, familiar things in an unusual look, famous trade marks.
"Civilization begins with sewerage": the history of water supply and sewerage from ancient times to the present.
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| From the city side | From the outside |
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| sculpture by Friedrich von Zollern | sculpture by Siegfried von Feuchtwangen |
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| Museum |
Brandenburg (Berlin)
Brandenburg (Berlin) gate (German Brandenburger Tor) located at the intersection of Bagration Street (Alter Garten) and Yuzhny Lane. 
The first city gates were built on this site in 1657. Intended to protect the city in the southwestern section, and the road leading to the Brandenburg castle (now the village of Ushakovo).
Due to scarce funding, a wooden gate with a roof that rested against an earthen rampart was built. For safety, a ditch was dug in front of them and filled with water.
18th century, by order of the Prussian king Frederick II, Brandenburg Gate were demolished, and in their place, to cover the city from the south (now Suvorov Street), a massive brick building was built. 
They had two spacious passages, guardhouse garrison premises, service, utility and storage rooms.
In 1843, restoration work was carried out, the gate building was almost completely rebuilt.
The pediments became pointed, with cruciform sandstone flowers and stylized leaves.
On the gate, there are sculptural portraits of Field Marshal Boyen (1771-1848), the Minister of War, a participant in the reforms in the Prussian army, and Lieutenant General Ernst von Astaire (1778-1855), chief of the engineering corps, one of the authors of the Second Shaft Fortification.
Brandenburg Gate- the only one of all the Konigsberg city gates that have survived to this day, performing their former transport function. The structure of the Brandenburg Gate has been restored and is protected by the state as an architectural monument.
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| From the outside | From the city side |
Ausfal
Ausfal (Passage) gates (German: Ausfalstor), located at the intersection of Gvardeisky Avenue (Deutschordenring) and Gornaya Street. 
The first gates on the site of the current ones were built in the twenties of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Konigsberg.
In 1866 Ausfalsk gate were completely rebuilt in the brick Gothic style. Due to the fact that they were intended only for pedestrians, and were less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates, the architectural design of the gates was an order of magnitude poorer than the rest of the city gates of Konigsberg.
Designed new Ausphalian Gate architect Ludwig von Astaire.
The Ausfalsk Gate has only one passage, to which a staircase and a narrow bridge led from the outside of the city. On the sides of the passage there are casemates with embrasures for frontal and flanking fire. 
The passage is blocked along an arc by an arched arch, which is decorated with a casing with teeth. The lateral outer walls of the gate opening into the moat are faced with granite slabs.
Nothing is known about the appearance of the facade of the gate from the side of the city, since the facade of the gate is covered with earth, and his photographs or drawings have not survived. A battle platform with a toothed parapet is located above the passage. From the very beginning, the gates cut into the rampart and were actually below ground level.
At the end of the 19th century, the rampart fortifications of the city lost their defensive functions, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the Ausphalian Gate was sold by the Ministry of War to the city administration, and the only passage of the gate was laid.
During the Second World War Ausfalsk gate were converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior gates were divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed by sealed protective doors.
After the war in Ausphalian Gate were used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for a nearby militia school, and even later they housed a sewage collector.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located flush with the level of the carriageway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died in the storming of Konigsberg.
Spring 2007 Ausfal and Railway gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad Museum of History and Art. It is planned to restore the gates, and place museum expositions in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.
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| Ausfal | sewage collector |
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| Orthodox chapel of St. George |
Steindamm
Steindammer thor, they were located in the area of the present Victory Square. They were demolished in 1912, after the defensive structures of the second bypass became obsolete, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.
They had two wide passages for transport and two passages for pedestrians. Three barracks were located on the right and left.
Like most of the city gates of Königsberg, the building Steindamm gate was built in the Gothic style.
The platbands of the arched gate were arrow-shaped. The edges of the roof were completed with teeth. Towers towered at the edges of the pedestrian portals. In the center of the gate, in a niche, there was a statue of King Frederick Wilheim 4.
Hollanderbaum
Hollanderbaum thor were located in the area of the intersection of General Butkov Street (Ausfalltorstr) and Marshal Baghramyan Embankment (Hollanderbaumstr), next to a two-tiered bridge over the Pregolya River.
The gate was named after the area in which it was located (Hollanderbaum, "Dutch tree"). The gate was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, after the defensive structures of the second bypass became obsolete, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.
Tragheim
Tragheim gate were located in the area of Gorky Street (Waldburgstr). They were demolished in 1910, after the defensive structures of the second bypass became obsolete, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.
Railroad
Railway gate (German: Eisenbahnhof Tor) were built in 1866-1869 by the architect Ludwig von Astaire.
The railway gates had two spans (north and south), decorated with pointed arches. On the sides of the railway spans, there are casemates with embrasures, and on the outside there is a guardhouse.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Deutschordenring Street (Deutschordenring, now Gvardeisky Prospekt) was laid over the gates.
After the Second World War, traffic on the branch line passing through the gate ceased due to the construction of a new one. The old paths were finally dismantled only in the 1990s; now a pedestrian path to Victory Park has been laid in their place.
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| Railroad |
It was a huge project. Unfortunately, not everything has survived to our days.
The center of Kaliningrad is surrounded by eight gates, of which there were even ten earlier. Each gate has its own history, its own character and its own secrets. You should definitely see them with your own eyes!
Ausfalsk gate
Ausfalsk gate (from the German Ausfalstor - gates for sorties) one of the simplest and most rebuilt gates of Konigsberg. The first gates were erected in the 17th century, in the 19th century they were used exclusively for the passage of pedestrians, and now the gates are completely blocked.
Location: southwestern corner of the intersection of Gvardeisky avenue and st. Mountain.
What's interesting: an Orthodox chapel was built on top of the Ausfal Gate.
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate - this is the only gates of the city still in use. They were built in 1657, and in 1843 they were almost completely rebuilt in the same place. Their style differs from all other gates of the city by their prominent triangular pediments. The gate has two passages on the road, covered with paving stones and tram lines.
Location: at the end of st. Bagration at the transition to st. Suvorov (Berlin).
What's interesting: the side parts of the gate were pedestrian, and now they are walled up.
Railway gate
Railway gate - a rather laconic brick gate through which there is a pedestrian passage. In the old days, a railway track passed along them to modern Baltiysk. There are rails today, but there is no train movement.
Location: under the carriageway of Gvardeisky Ave.
What's interesting: on the building you can find the date of construction 1866-1869.
Zakheim gate
Zakheim gate impressive with powerful hollow towers from the inside. The gate dates from the 17th century, but the current structure dates back to the middle of the 19th century. In the 20th century, the casemates were partially demolished for the extension of residential buildings.
Location: at the intersection of ave. Moscow and Lithuanian shaft.
What's interesting: now the Brandenburg Gate is used for cultural events based on the "Gate" art platform.
Royal gate
Royal gate - this is a very massive structure, finished and not burdened with secondary buildings. Initially it was the Kalthof Gate, then the Gumbinnen Gate, and in 1811 it was renamed the Royal Gate. Like all the gates of Konigsberg, the building has undergone many reconstructions.
Location: at the intersection of st. Frunze and the Lithuanian shaft.
What's interesting: such a mighty gate has managed to be a warehouse, shop and cafe, but now there is a Museum of the World Ocean with samples of amber from all over the world.
Rossgarten gate
Rossgarten gate have a main opening and six casemates - three on each side of the opening. The casemates on the outside are an embrasure for shooting, and on the inside - windows. It is noteworthy that the outer side of the gate has no finishing.
Location: at the intersection of st. Chernyakhovsky and A. Nevsky.
What's interesting: now there is a cafe at the gate, and the casemates play the role of a wardrobe, utility rooms and a kitchen.
Friedland gate
Friedland gate take their name from the city of Friedland (now Pravdinsk). Two main thoroughfares have been laid; from the side of the city there is no wall and no middle part. It is known that the first Friedland Gate of the 17th century was located in a slightly different place. The gate was erected at its present location in about 1857-1862.
Location: intersection of Kalinin avenue and st. Dzerzhinsky.
What's interesting: in the 80s, antiquities were found at the gate, which can now be viewed in the operating museum.
Friedrichsburg gate
Friedrichsburg gate - this is the remainder of the fortress-bastion called Friedrichsburg. The gate now looks like a medieval building - four rounded towers, Gothic false windows and parapets in the form of battlements.
The former fortress was erected in 1657 by the decree of the great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm. The gates themselves were built up already in 1852 according to the drawings of F.A. Stuler.
Location: st. Portovaya, 39.
What's interesting: in 1697 the fortress was honored with a visit by Peter I to study bombardment.
Visiting 8 amazing gate Koenigsberg, you will discover that at the gate you can eat, have a cultural time and even pray.
Learn more about the excursion and leave a request:
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established in history for centuries,
I miss you day and night
and I know by heart your every stone ... "
(Horst Glass "Königsberg")
The old gates of Königsberg ... Like doors to the past, they invite us to travel several centuries back to the good old Königsberg - the capital of East Prussia.
Alas, not every modern Kaliningrad citizen will find today in the silent fragments once majestic city something interesting and exciting for yourself. People immersed in the hustle and bustle of their thoughts and rhythm modern city, habitually rush past the ancient gates, not paying any attention to them. And only nostalgic groups of German tourists tirelessly click the shutters of their cameras to capture the history of Königsberg in pictures, which continues to this day ...
Back in 2011, I planned to publish a series of posts on all the remaining gates of our city, but I never realized this idea. Well, maybe the time has come now? The Königsberg gate has always been something special to me. For my work, I often visit the area of the Royal and Rosgarten gates. And every time they again and again rivet my eyes to themselves, and the imagination draws a picture of the past centuries ...
Here is a mustachioed guard, hiding from the hot July sun in the shade of the gate, checking the documents of a merchant hurrying to the city. Nimble boys run through the gate with lightning, hurrying to plunge into the cool waters of a nearby pond, and an elegant lady under a snow-white umbrella is talking animatedly about something with a cheerful soldier ... Peace and tranquility reign everywhere, the warm sun is shining, birds are singing in the green of the trees, and the air is filled aroma from a nearby bakery ...
I want to start my story about the gates of Königsberg with a general story about when and why the city gates began to be built, and then I will introduce you to the first gates on our route - Ausfalskie and Zheleznodorozhny.
It is logical that any gate should lead somewhere. So, for example, the very first gates of Königsberg were erected in the 13th century at the same time Royal castle and led to him courtyard... A century later, when the city grew and was surrounded by a wall, the gates have already become an integral part of the fortress.
A more serious rampart was built in 1626-1634 and surrounded Königsberg on all sides. The fortification consisted of several bastions and half-bastions, as well as 9 gates. In addition, from the side of the sea in 1657, the powerful fort of Friedrichsburg was laid.
And already two centuries later, King Frederick William IV issued a decree on the beginning of the construction of the Second rampart fortification, generally repeating the contours of the previous one. The powerful towers of Don and Wrangel, the Kronprinz defensive barracks and the Astronomical Bastion are being built, and new fortified gates are being erected on the site of the previous ones. The first in 1843 began to build the Royal Gate, and the construction was completed with the construction of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
However, already at the beginning of the 20th century, the Second Shaft Fortification lost its military significance and was partially demolished, freeing the rapidly developing Königsberg new areas for urban construction. So the most beautiful Steindamm and Tragheim gates disappeared from the face of the earth, and in their place was built the Hanza-platz square, now known as Victory Square. Time did not spare the Hollanderbaum Gate either ...
02. Königsberg Steindamm Gate that has not survived.
But the remaining seven gates of the Second Shaft Circumference have survived to this day, and it is about them that my story will be.
Our route begins from Victory Square - the heart of modern Kaliningrad, where, perhaps the most beautiful, gates of the city were once located - Steindamm... We will return to these gates, but for now we will head along the Gvardeisky Avenue, which starts from Victory Square, to Victory Park and the memorial complex "1200 Soldiers-Guards".
It is here, across the street from the Astronomical Bastion and a hundred meters from the obelisk, that the most inconspicuous city gates are located - Ausfal... Now on their roof there is a small Orthodox chapel of St. George the Victorious, built in 1995, but the gate itself can be seen by going down to a small lake in the park, formed from a former moat.
03. Chapel of St. George the Victorious on ... the roof of the gate.
Why are the gates below the earth's surface and where do they lead? To do this, let's take a look at the history of the construction of these gates.
Ausfalsk gate(it. Ausfalltor), in translation meaning "Exit Gate", were designed in the 17th century and were part of the first rampart fortification of Koenigsberg. The author of the project is an unknown military engineer.
These gates were exclusively pedestrian and served as a passage through the earthen rampart. On the field side, a small bridge over the fortress moat adjoined the gate. The bridge itself is long gone ... only the preserved coastal pillars of brick and granite still remind us of the past. And if you look closely at the tree-covered slope, you can still see (especially in winter), not yet destroyed by time, the road leading to the bridge over the moat.
The Ausfal gates are not distinguished by their bright pompous architecture and are more reminiscent of a powerful firing point, the casemates of which bristled with numerous embrasures for direct and lateral fire at the enemy. The high walls of the casemates are half lined with granite slabs, which protect the brickwork from water and snow. And the only decoration of the gate was only the five brick battlements above the arched passage.
At the beginning of the 20th century, during the modernization of the rampart fortification, the Ausfal Gate turned out to be below ground level and was turned into a pedestrian tunnel, and a little later the city part of the gate was completely covered with earth.
During the Great Patriotic War, the gate was converted into a command post-dugout with hermetically sealed concrete rooms. During the hostilities, the Ausfal Gates practically did not suffer, and already in the post-war period, a warehouse and a bomb shelter for the Kaliningrad Police School (the modern Kaliningrad Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation), located next door, was arranged in them.
At the moment, it is not possible to get inside the gate, but in 2007 the Ausfal Gate was transferred to the Kaliningrad Museum of History and Art, which gives rise to some hope that this gate will someday be restored and become available for careful inspection by tourists. Although, already 10 years have passed, but things are still there ...
11. Once upon a time there was a bridge leading to the gate.
The second gate, which we will meet, is located next to the Ausfal gate. They are called - Railroad(it. Eisenbahnhof Tor). The old railway to Pillau (Baltiysk) ran through this gate, also designed in the second half of the 19th century by Ludwig von Aster.
Architecturally, the gate has two separate arched spans with barrel vaults. And if from the outside everything was rather modest, then from the side of the city the arches were made in the form of beautiful lancet portals.
On the sides of the gate there are classic casemates, and on the field side, the gate is equipped with a guard room - a guardroom and two gates that look like the claws of a giant crab.
Once upon a time, gate wings were installed on them, closing which it was possible to turn this section of the gate into a small patio. It should be noted that this is the only gate with a similar architectural solution.
In addition, there was another one at the gate. interesting feature... In the walls of the arches (from floor to ceiling) rectangular recesses were made - punishment... Rectangular beams or sleepers were horizontally laid in them like "blinds", which made it possible to completely close the passage through the gate.
15. Notches are visible - punches. Archival photo of the author, 2011
Moreover, it was impossible to disassemble such an obstacle from the side of the enemy, unless, of course, direct fire was fired at it from a cannon. Therefore, the effectiveness of this fortification fence in the 19th century was highly questionable ...
When the gates lost their defensive purpose, a road was laid along the top, which turned the gates into a real bridge, across the railway tracks, which were dismantled only in the early 90s of the XX century.
Currently, the gate partially fulfills its function. Cars sometimes pass through them, and mostly residents of nearby houses use the gates, since a pedestrian path to Victory Park passes through them - an excellent place for cultural recreation... Like the Ausfal Gates, in 2007 the Railway Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad History and Art Museum.
And recently, the digital Planetarium of the Center for the Popularization of Sciences named after F.V. Bessel. In the future, in one of the arches of the monument building, the tenants intend to open a gallery, which will exhibit works of astrophoto artists, photographers, as well as children creative work... A 14.15 on December 21 and 22 at the gate the Festival will be held scientific cinema, in which viewers will be shown full-length documentaries about science from around the world, created over the past five years.
Of the amusing curiosities associated with these gates, I would like to note a plaque from the series "do not believe your eyes", explaining to us that this is not a gate at all, but a church of the 19th century ... The plaque hung on the wall of the gate for a long time and only after a recent restoration it was removed and replaced to the modern correct one.
This concludes the first part of my story about the Königsberg gate, and in the second part we will get acquainted with the Friedrichsburg and Brandenburg gates.
To be continued...
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