City gates of Koenigsberg. Gate of Königsberg. Ausfal and Railway Gates. History of gate construction

This section will tell you about one of the attractions Kaliningrad region- seven survivors and some information about the completely destroyed gates, which at one time served as the entrance to the city of Königsberg.

Sackheim Gate

Sackheim Gate (German: Sackheimer Tor) is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt and Litovsky Val.

The current Sackheim Gate building was built in the mid-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. Before late XIX century, while rampart fortifications existed, the gate served as a checkpoint at the entrance to the city. After the ramparts were demolished, they lost their defensive function and became a kind of analogue triumphal arch. At the beginning of the 20th century, the gate was sold by the military department to the city. After this, part of the casemates was demolished and residential buildings were added to the gates.

After World War II, the gates began to be used as a warehouse, which was their function until 2006. Moreover, the gate has the status of a historical monument of federal significance.

In 2006, restoration of the gate began. After restoration, the gate will be transferred to the federal government institution “Center for Standardization and Metrology.” There will be laboratories and a small museum where you can see scales and other ancient measuring instruments.

Architecture

The Sackheim Gate has one passage in the form of an arch. In the past there were also smaller arches on the sides, which may have been pedestrian passages, but they have not survived to this day. At the corners of the gate there are four towers: two round on the city side and octagonal on the outside. On the city side, the gates were decorated with high reliefs of Johann David Ludwig York and Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, and on the outside with an image of a black eagle (the Order of the Black Eagle was the highest award of Prussia).

Royal Gate

Korolevskie Voromta is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovsky Val. In 2005, the Royal Gate was a symbol of the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad. Since the same year, the gate has been a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. They house an exhibition dedicated to the visit of the Grand Embassy of Peter I to Königsberg.

The gate is built in a pseudo-Gothic style and looks like a small castle.

German time

The current Royal Gate inherited its name from an older gate located on the same site. These first gates were originally called Gumbinnensky, since it was to Gumbinnen (now Gusev) that the road leading through them led. In 1811, the gate was renamed the Royal Gate, after the name of the street on which it was located (Koenigstrasse). The name of the street is due to the fact that Prussian kings followed it on their way from the Königsberg castle to military reviews in the suburb of Devau.

At the end of the first half of the 19th century century, the modernization of city fortifications began in Königsberg. Then the old gates were demolished, and new ones were built in their place, which 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 construction was completed in 1850.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the defensive structures, 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 adjacent to 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 they are not mentioned in the chronicles of military operations and in memoirs.

The gates were damaged by artillery and bombing, but this does not mean that they were a target, because the entire city was subject to shelling and bombing.

Soviet time

Nothing is known about the history of the gate between 1945 and 1960. The first official post-war document related to the Royal Gate is Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 1327 of August 30, 1960. This document established a list historical monuments cities taken under state protection.

However, the only consequence of this resolution was that the gates were decorated with a sign “The monument is registered and protected by the state.” No restoration or even conservation work was carried out then.

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 were not restored, they were not written about. The gates gradually collapsed.

In 1975, the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the Office for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments received the following letter, signed by the chairman of the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee V.V. Denisov:

The Kaliningrad City Executive Committee reports that repair and conservation work on the “Royal Gate”, located on Frunze Street - Litovsky 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, soon a new threat loomed over the gates:

“...We ask for your permission to demolish the following sculptural images, high reliefs, bas-reliefs and medallions as representing neither historical nor national value: a) from the Royal Gate sculptural images of Frederick I, Duke Albrecht and Ottokar II, b) from the Brandenburg Gate medallions with images of generals Astaire and Boyen and the coat of arms of Prussia...".

The author of this letter, sent to the state inspection for the protection of historical and cultural monuments in 1976, was a person whose position was not to destroy, but to preserve cultural monuments, namely the head of the Department of Culture of the Kaliningrad Regional Executive Committee, V. K. Glushkov.

However, Moscow experts did not give the green light to “hewing” the gates.

That same year, for the first time since the end of the war, the gate began to be used: it housed a bookshop.

In subsequent years, attempts by local authorities to destroy the gate did not stop. In the issue of January 8, 1978, the newspaper “Kaliningradskaya Pravda” wrote that the gate should be demolished. It is unlikely that this article was an accident, since around 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 city’s pre-war history 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, the Ministry of Culture sent a special commission to Kaliningrad. She worked in the city from September 10 to 16, 1978. As a result, the protective 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 gates, and a request to remove their status as a protected monument was refused.

By the beginning of perestroika, the bookstore at the gate ceased to exist. They again became an abandoned structure, which no one cared for, and which gradually collapsed. For some time the gate was used as a warehouse.

As noted above, by 1991 the gates were abandoned. Over the next ten years, this situation 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 was not only one of many objects restored for the anniversary, it was this building that became the main symbol of the anniversary.

The anniversary symbol was a silhouette of a gate against the background of the Russian flag with the inscriptions “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.

Restoration work began in November 2004. By this time, the condition of the gate left much to be desired, because it had been 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 knocked off

The progress of the restoration of the gate was supervised at the highest level, since the organizing committee for preparing the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad was headed by Russian Minister of Economy German Gref. In February 2005, he announced that if the gate was not completely restored by July 3 (the last day of the anniversary celebrations), then a “Royal Gallows” would be installed next to it for the officials responsible for the restoration.

However, there was no need to resort to such drastic measures: the gates were ready on time. Their opening after restoration took place on July 1.

Restoring 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 it was possible to judge what they looked like before the war only from photographs. It was extremely difficult to send the figures for restoration to Germany, where there is extensive experience in such work, due to Russian laws, which provide for a complex procedure for obtaining permission for the temporary export of cultural objects abroad. In this regard, it was decided to restore the figures on site.

To restore the figures, masters Aleksey Kadyrov and Sergey Bugaev, sculptor-restorers who had previously restored the Singing Chapel named after them, arrived in Kaliningrad from St. Petersburg. Glinka in St. Petersburg. Also, the leading restorer of the State Hermitage, Vyacheslav Mozgovoy, was invited to restore the bas-reliefs.

The difficulty of the restoration lay, among other things, in the fact that the figures were made of a special type of sandstone, and a special composition had to be created to strengthen the heads.

There were some oddities: when the heads were almost ready, detailed photographs of the figures were discovered in one of the Polish archives. The heads had to be remade. Now, in case the kings lose their heads again in the future for some reason, they can be replaced with spare ones.

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”, from which the Kaliningraders of the future will learn how the Kaliningraders of 2005 imagined their time. One of the entries in the book was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2, while he was attending anniversary celebrations.

The creation of a message to descendants was an initiative of the Museum of the World Ocean.

On February 10, 2005, the gates were transferred to the Museum of the World Ocean. There is an exhibition dedicated to the Great Embassy of Peter I 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 clearly expressed. The gate material is brick.

The Royal Gate consists of a single passage 4.5 meters wide, flanked by former casemates. On the city side, the casemates had windows and doors, and on the outside - embrasures. On the outside of the gate there was a so-called guardhouse - a courtyard with gunfire from all sides.

The vertical division of the gate consists of three equally wide parts, two lateral parts of the division contain casemates, while the middle one 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 the passage) rises above them to the height of another tier. There are crenellations on the edges of the roof of both the casemates and the central part. At the four corners of the high central part there is a tower. On the outer corners of the lower tier there are four similar towers, so the gate has eight towers. Now all eight towers look the same, but in the 19th century the towers of the lower tier were shaped like turrets - stylized watchtowers. Most likely, the towers of the lower tier acquired their current 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 bas-reliefs of King Ottokar II of the Czech Republic (left), King Frederick I of Prussia (middle) and Duke of Prussia Albrecht I (right) are installed. Below the figures are their family coats of arms. 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 m thick. Thus, the gate walls could withstand the shelling of the artillery of that time. The coverings of the tiers and the ceilings between the tiers are made in the form of a system of cross vaults. Since these vaults caused strong expansion, buttresses were built on the side faces of the gate.

During its existence, the architecture of the gate has undergone changes. Back in 1875, the northern casemate was converted into a passage for pedestrians, and later the same thing happened with the southern casemate. After the sale of the gate 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 sides of the gate were rebuilt, which are visible after the shaft was razed.

Gates as a possible place to hide lost cultural values

During the war, cultural property stolen by German troops from museums, archives, libraries and churches of the Soviet Union was sent to Königsberg. In the spring of 1945, these valuables, along with valuables from Königsberg museums and other cultural institutions, were buried in various hiding places. Often such hiding places were located in fortifications.

There are versions that the valuables were hidden in the gates of Königsberg, including the Royal ones.

The expedition's search was mainly focused on the Rostgarten Gate, as there was other evidence that valuables were hidden there. Search for the most part We limited ourselves to a visual inspection of the premises. The expedition did not have its own instruments; they used instruments borrowed from the military engineering school. Although these devices were not intended for such use, the search engines had no choice.

Rossgarten Gate

Rossgarten Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Chernyakhovsky and Alexander Nevsky streets, next to Vasilevsky Square and the Amber Museum.

The current gate building is located on the site where the gate of the same name was located, which belonged to the first rampart fortification of the city (early 17th century).

The gate building that has survived to this day was built in 1852-1855 according to the design of Engineer Hauptmann and director of fortress construction Irfugelbrecht and Lieutenant Engineer von Heil in Königsberg. The design of the gate facade was developed by the secret supreme building councilor August Stüler, head of the Technical Construction Deputation in Berlin. The author of the sculptural decorations is Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.

The first gate project was developed in 1852 by the department of fortresses in Königsberg. This project was significantly revised by Privy Councilor Stüler. Stüler himself worked out the design of the façade, giving it distinct Gothic forms.

After the war, the gate was restored and began to be used as the 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 façade of the gate consists of seven openings. On the city side, the casemates have windows, on the outside - embrasures.

Above the façade of the gate there is a row of battlements, divided into two halves by a raised central part. On the sides, the central part is framed by two high octagonal turrets, which end with decorative machicolations. Between the turrets there is a high arch, which precedes the actual entrance to the gate. Above the arch there is an observation platform fenced with battlements. To the right and left of the arch are arcades consisting of arches supported by columns.

On the sides of the main arch there are two medallions-portraits depicting the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

While the city side of the gate is beautifully decorated, the outer side is undecorated. From the outside, the passage is covered by a blockhouse, from which all-round rifle and artillery fire could be conducted, and a guardhouse, from the embrasures of which frontal and flank fire could be conducted. The guardhouse had swing gates. In front of the guardhouse there was a ditch, over which a drawbridge was thrown.

Ausfal Gate

Ausfal Gate (also: exit gate, from German Ausfalstor, gate for sorties) is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located on the southwestern corner of the intersection of Gvardeisky Prospekt and Gornaya Street, in close proximity to the monument to the 1200 Guardsmen.

Of all the surviving gates, the Ausfal gates were rebuilt to the greatest extent.

The first gate, approximately on the site of the current one, was built in the twenties of the XVII century, 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 through, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by its poorer architectural design). The new Ausphallian Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster.

The gate cut into the shaft from the very beginning and was actually below ground level. In the 20th century, the only gate passage was blocked. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold by the military department to the city.

During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a control center military units. The vast interior of the gate was divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed with hermetically sealed security doors.

After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for the nearby police school, and later as a sewage collector.

In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located level with the level of the roadway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died during the storming of Koenigsberg.

In the spring of 2007, the Ausfalskie and Railway gate were transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates and place museum exhibitions 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 are still preserved), which confirms that the gate only allowed pedestrians through. On the sides of the passage there are casemates with embrasures for frontal and flanking fire. The passage is blocked in an arc with a bow arch, which is decorated with a casing with teeth. The side outer walls of the gate opening into the moat are lined with granite slabs, decorated with rustication in the quadra type.

Above the passage there is a combat platform with a crenellated parapet.

ABOUT appearance Nothing is known about the inner (facing the city) façade of the gate, since it was covered with earth, and no photographs or drawings of it have survived.

Railway gates (Kaliningrad)

The railway gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. The gate is located under the roadway of Gvardeysky Prospekt, next to the monument to 1200 guardsmen. A pedestrian path passes through the gate leading to the park located behind the monument.

There is an inscription on the gate with the date of its construction - 1866-1869. It is located on the keystone of the gate. The Railway Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster (he is also the author of the Ausfal Gate project).

The railway leading to Pillau (now Baltiysk) passed through these gates. After the defensive structures of the city center were removed, the Deutschordenring street (now Gvardeisky Avenue) was laid along the former rampart. Thus, since then the gate has been inconspicuous, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.

After World War II, traffic on the railway passing through the gate ceased as a new railway line was built. Nevertheless, the rails from the old road were preserved until the end of the nineties.

Later, a pedestrian path was laid along the route of the former railway, which leads from Moskovsky Prospekt through the Zheleznodorodnye Gate to the park behind the monument to 1200 guardsmen.

In the spring of 2007, the Zheleznodorozhny and Ausfal Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates and place museum exhibitions on military-historical topics 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 pointed arches. The gate portals are decorated with 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 a forged lattice, which protect Gvardeysky Avenue passing through the gate.

A special feature of the gates are the so-called fines. They are vertical double arms of square section, arranged in the walls of the arches. In case of defense, strong beams should have been laid from them. The barrier thus formed resembled blinds. It was impossible to disassemble the fines from the outside.

Other railway gates in Königsberg

There were other railway gates in Königsberg. The first ones were built after 1853 and were located next to the Brandenburg Gate. The railway leading to Berlin passed through these gates. There were 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 fortification at its intersection with the road leading to Brandenburg Castle (now the village of Ushakovo). Due to lack Money and the corresponding project, the organizers limited themselves to the construction of wooden gates placed under the roof and resting on an earthen rampart. To provide 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 demolished, and in its place a massive brick building was built with two spacious passages with a lancet ending. New strong gates completely blocked the road to the south (now Suvorov Street) and served as reliable protection for the city. Thick walls well covered a small garrison of guards, who were housed in internal casemates. There were also service, utility, storage rooms and lifts. During restoration work in 1843, the gate was significantly rebuilt (almost rebuilt on the same site) and decorated with pointed decorative pediments, cruciform sandstone flowers, stylized leaves on the finials, coats of arms and medallions. On the gate there are sculptural portraits of Field Marshal Boyen (1771-1848), Minister of War, participant in 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 Rampart fortification.

The Brandenburg Gate is the only Königsberg gate that has survived to this day, fulfilling its former transport function. The building has been restored and is protected by the state as an architectural monument decorating Bagration Street in Kaliningrad.

Architecture

The gate has two passages. Although all the gates built in the mid-19th century in Königsberg belonged to the neo-Gothic style, in the Brandenburg Gate the Gothic motifs are especially pronounced. The arrow-shaped pediments stand out, giving the essentially low building a sense of height. The gates are richly decorated with decorative elements - for example, high reliefs and stylized stone flowers.

Friedland Gate

Friedland Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Kalinin Avenue and Dzerzhinsky Street, adjacent to Yuzhny Park (formerly the park of the 40th anniversary of the Komsomol). There is a museum inside 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 in the current location.

The now preserved Friedland Gate became the last gate of Königsberg (that is, it was the last to be built). 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 outdated gate, which had lost its military significance, along with the entire second shaft contour, was sold by the War Ministry to the city. Then traffic 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 gate was empty for a long time, then it housed a warehouse. In the late 1980s, work was carried out in South Park to clear the area and clean the bottom of the park's many ponds. During these works, many old objects were found. Soon a museum was organized at the gate, the basis of the collection of which was the objects found in the park.

Architecture

Like all the 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 Stüler.

The façade of the gate on the city side is divided into six parts by five buttresses. The buttresses are crowned with pointed, gable, decorative turrets that project above a decorative crenellated parapet. All external gate openings (passages, windows, doors) are made in the form of pointed arches and decorated with perspective portals.

The two central parts of the gate are occupied by driveways. The dimensions of the passages are 4.39 m wide and 4.24 m high. The parts along the edges are occupied by casemates.

The surface of the gate façade is decorated as if with a grid, which is a rhombic pattern. 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 was not preserved (disappeared after the war). Another statue, depicting Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, is located on the outside of the gate. This statue has been preserved, but its head has been broken off. There is a guardhouse on the outside of the gate.

The museum at the Friedland Gate was founded by Alexander Georgievich Novik (1956-2001). Initially, the museum was actually private and had no official status. Only in 2002 the museum was officially created by order of the director South Park. The museum formally opened on October 22, 2002.

The basis of the museum's exhibition are objects found during the cleanup of the park and its reservoirs. In the museum you can see antique bottles, dishes, household items, cart and carriage wheels, etc. Another exhibition tells about the fortifications of Königsberg.

In 2007, the museum took second place in the fourth All-Russian competition “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.

Unpreserved city gates of Kaliningrad

In addition to the seven city gates that have survived to this day, there were other gates in Königsberg that are now lost.

Tragheim Gate

The Tragheim Gate was located in the area of ​​what is now Victory Square. They were demolished in 1910, after the defensive structures of the second circuit became outdated, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.

Steindamm Gate

Just like the Tragheim gate, these gates were located in the area of ​​​​the current Victory Square. They were demolished in 1912.

Hollanderbaumsky

These gates were located at the intersection of what is now General Butkov Street and Marshal Bagryamyan Embankment, next to the two-tier bridge over the Pregolya. The gate was named after the area in which it was located (Hollenderbaum, "Dutch tree"). Nearby was railroad station with the same name. The gate was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century.

The historical center is surrounded by eight gates - initially there were ten, but people and time have not spared all the buildings. Urban gates of Kaliningrad were erected in the 19th century as part of the Second Rampart defensive circuit, encircling the city in the form of a ring. In addition to the gates, it includes towers, bastions, redoubts and the defensive barracks "Kronprinz".

The second rampart defensive contour is fortifications, which, together with the so-called “Night feather bed of Königsberg”, form a fortified city.

Brandenburg Gate of Kaliningrad

Friedrichsburg Gate are not city gates, they were part of the Friedrichsburg fortress, which was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century. In architecture they are similar to the city gates of Königsberg and were also built in the neo-Gothic style from baked figured bricks.

During construction work Not only the protective function was taken into account, but also the aesthetics of these buildings - they are all made of red brick in the neo-Gothic style and are very similar to medieval knightly castles. Their historical appearance was preserved during restoration work.

Each of the eight buildings is unique in its own way and has its own history, some of them are located. After visiting the majestic gates of Königsberg, you can sit in cozy cafes, visit museum exhibitions and truly feel the spirit of the history of this beautiful ancient city.

Gate map

Museum website: http://fvmuseum.ru Address: st. Dzerzhinsky, house 30. Opening hours: daily from 10.00 to 18.00, the first Friday of the month is a sanitary day. Ticket price: 200 rubles, students, schoolchildren, pensioners - 100 rubles, from 5 to 7 years - 50 rubles, family ticket - 400 rubles.

Friedland Gate is located on the outskirts historical center Kaliningrad, this is where city guests begin to get acquainted with the sights. They are made of red brick in a neo-Gothic style. The gate has two large portals and five buttresses that divide the façade of the structure.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Friedland Gate of Kaliningrad was supposed to be demolished, but it was transferred to the ownership of the municipality - this saved it from destruction. The gate has been preserved as an architectural monument. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, the structure was closed to traffic and served as the entrance to the park.

During the Second World War, Friedland Gate was again returned to its status as a military facility. It must be said that during the hostilities in Koenigsberg in 1945, the structure remained practically untouched, which cannot be said about the post-war period. IN Soviet years The Friedland Gate was empty, the unique red brick was covered with many layers of lime, grass and even trees grew on the roof, and the facade was slowly collapsing. They were restored only in the late 1980s with funds raised by concerned citizens.

Today

At this place is located Friedland Gate Museum. The museum includes collections of weapons from the 19th and 20th centuries, ancient dishes, various craft tools and much more. Permanent exhibitions: “Knight’s Hall”, “Civilization Begins from the Sewers”, “With Faith in the Heart”, “Echoes of War”.

Exhibition "Echoes of War"

Ticket price: 50 rubles, schoolchildren, students, pensioners - 30 rubles. Opening hours: daily from 11.00 to 17.30. The first Friday of the month is sanitary day. Visiting the site in sessions (at the beginning of every hour).

In an underground bunker, which the population of Königsberg used as a bomb shelter during the war, a permanent exhibition"Echo of War". There are no objects here except photographs on the walls of the destroyed Königsberg. Only the atmosphere of a cramped space, as well as sound and light effects: the howl of sirens, dive bombers and exploding shells against the backdrop of flashing lights.

“Echoes of War” gives a little insight into what civilians felt during World War II.

Vehicle traffic is still organized through the Brandenburg Gate in Kaliningrad, unlike the other gates, and a tram line has also been laid here. Pedestrians used to be able to walk through the sides of the gate, but today they are walled up with masonry.

This massive and stately old red brick structure has two driveways. Initially, there were guardrooms, weapons warehouses and various utility rooms here. However, during the restoration of 1843, the building was almost completely changed - pediments with sharp peaks and cruciform flowers made of sandstone appeared, and sculptures of Prussian military leaders were installed.

Some tourists, impressed by the beauty of this historical structure, compare it with a folklore “gingerbread house”.

Today

The Brandenburg Gate has been completely restored and has the status of a state historical and architectural monument. Here it is free museum marzipan from the Pomatti company - a manufacturer of marzipan and chocolate. Next to the museum there is a Pomatti store and a cafe.

Friedrichsburg Gate

Friedrichsburg Gate is all that remains of the once majestic Friedrichsburg fortress. They still resemble the castle of a medieval knight - four towers in the corners, battlement parapets and Gothic false windows.

It was here that the great Peter I was trained in artillery, and the drawings of this building formed the basis Peter and Paul Fortress. Interesting fact- the bastions at the corners of the once existing fort had very unusual names— Emerald, Ruby, Diamond, Pearl.

Fort Friedrichsburg was built in 1657, and the gates were added to it only two centuries later - in 1852. The citadel was demolished after the First World War, but the gate remains. They are very similar to other city gates of Königsberg.

Today

Friedrichsburg Gate is a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean - historical and cultural center Ship Resurrection. Here you can get acquainted with the history of shipbuilding and shipbuilding. The School of Navigational Sciences has been created on the basis of the institution - lessons in it are available to anyone.

In addition, you can visit the office of Peter the Great. The open area of ​​the museum presents visitors with an exhibition of traditional swimming means of various peoples of the world - Lodeyny Dvor.

The railway gates were built in the 60s of the 19th century. They have two arched spans with pointed tops. On either side of them there are casemated rooms with embrasures, and on the outside there is a guard room.

It is noteworthy that today there is a roadway above these gates, and they themselves serve as the entrance to the park. The railway gate is more reminiscent of a short tunnel through which the railway tracks used to be laid, leading to modern Baltiysk. Traffic has long ceased, and the rails have been removed.

The railway gates have been part of the city's historical and artistic complex since 2007. It is planned to restore the building and place museum exhibitions in it. The railway gate is located 240 meters from the Ausfal Gate.

Today

Now the Kaliningrad Planetarium is located in the Railway Gate. Bessel.

Address: Gvardeysky Prospekt, 22A

The Ausfal Gate was not originally intended for traffic, so its external design is much more modest than the other gates of Kaliningrad. They are called the most inconspicuous gates of Kaliningrad.

The gate has only one passage and is made entirely of brick in the Gothic style. The façade on the city side was destroyed, and drawings and photographs, if there were any, are unlikely to have survived, so nothing is known now about what it looked like. Above the passage there is a combat platform and a parapet with battlements.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ausfal Gate became the property of the municipality, and the passage was walled up. The building was actively used in 1939-1945. — then the unit control center was located here. After the war there was a warehouse here, and during the USSR it was a bomb shelter. After some time, there were sewage treatment plants here. In the early 90s, a small chapel was built in this place, which is still in operation today.

Today

On the territory of the Ausfal Gate there is St. George's Chapel. Nearby there is a pond and Victory Park.

Restaurant website: sun-stone.ru Address: Marshal Vasilevsky Square, building 3A

The Rossgarten Gate is located at the intersection of Alexander Nevsky and Chernyakhovsky streets, not far from Marshal Vasilevsky Square. The construction dates back to the 50s XIX century. The gate has a wide arch-shaped central passage and six casemates - three on each side. Towers rise on both sides of the central arch.

Most likely, the Rossgarten Gate was never intended for pedestrian traffic, but casemed rooms were reserved for guarding the gate. In the second half of the last century, the building was restored, but it lost its original function and there is no passage through it.

Today

Here is a popular tourist destination local residents restaurant "Sunny Stone", and the former casemates were converted into a kitchen and various utility rooms for staff.

This is the most beautiful and majestic gate of Kaliningrad, it is not for nothing that they received this name. For a long time they were considered the main entrance to the city and were used for celebrations and various official events.

By the way, it is no coincidence that these gates were named Royal - from the end of the 18th century, royal families went through them to watch the parades and formations of the troops of the Koenigsberg garrison. It is also known that Emperor Napoleon entered the city through the Royal Gate.

History and time have been kind to this massive, complete, ancient structure with no additional extensions, but in different years there was a warehouse and a bookstore here, but in the difficult and troubled 90s it stood in disrepair. Only for the 750th anniversary of the city were the Royal Gates completely restored.

Today

Now, as in the Friedrichsburg Gate, the Royal Gate is located branch of the Museum of the World Ocean - historical and cultural center "Great Embassy". There are exhibitions on the topic of international relations between Russia and European countries. Here you can also find samples of amber from all over the globe.

The Sackheim Gate has one passage in the form of a vault with round Gothic towers at the edges. Perhaps, thanks to these towers the building looks very majestic and massive.

Like other gates of Kaliningrad, this structure initially served as a defense for the city, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was transferred to the municipality, which did not attach much historical significance to this object. As a result, part of the casemates was demolished, and residential buildings for the townspeople were added to the gate itself.

From the post-war period until the beginning of the 21st century, a warehouse was located here. Only in 2006 did its restoration begin. The Sackheim Gate has been given the status of a historical and architectural monument at the federal level.

Today

Here is located art platform "Gate", which organizes art exhibitions, conferences, concerts, exhibitions and much more.

Not preserved gate

There were other gates in Koenigsberg, which, unfortunately, have not survived to this day - Steindamm, considered at one time the most beautiful gate of all, Hollanderbaumsky And Tragheimskie gates . All gates were destroyed by order of the head of the city government at the beginning of the 20th century.

Every year, millions of tourists from all over the world travel to Kaliningrad to get acquainted with another culture - mysterious, unfamiliar and so alluring. The city gates of Kaliningrad are part of this culture, surviving and surviving even in the most difficult and terrible times. Therefore, humanity is obliged to preserve it for posterity along with other attractions.

Now it’s time to explain why gates are mentioned in the title of the post.
In 1626 - 1634, a rampart fortification was erected, which surrounded Königsberg on all sides. The fortification consisted of several bastions and half-bastions, as well as 9 gates. In addition, on the sea side, the powerful fort of Friedrichsburg was founded in 1657.
And already two centuries later, King Frederick William IV issues a decree on the beginning of the construction of the Second Rampart fortification, which generally follows the contours of the previous one. The powerful Don and Wrangel towers, the defensive barracks Kronprinz and the Astronomical Bastion are being built, and new fortified gates are being erected on the site of the previous ones. The construction of the Royal Gate was the first to begin in 1843, and construction was completed with the construction of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
We didn’t manage to visit all the gates: (But I’ll still show you some of them:)

Brandenburg Gate

There is a memorial plaque on the wall.

And here are the gates themselves. The tram line runs through them.

The Brandenburg Gate was built around 1860. The facade was designed by architect August Stüler. On the side facing the city, two portrait medallions of the sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stümler have been preserved: on the left is the military engineer Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen, on the left is General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, a participant in the Napoleonic wars and the author of the second rampart fortification of the Königsberg fortress. The name of the gate can be interpreted in two ways: first, through it there is a road to the Order Castle Brandenburg (now the village of Ushakovo); second, the same road leads to the German state of Brandenburg. But they have nothing in common with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

which one is a field marshal and which one 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 are quite normal in size. According to my feelings, they shake on the road twice as much as in Moscow :)
A little history of the Königsberg 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-drawn tram route was opened in Königsberg (in the same year, an electric tram was already launched in Berlin). The horsecar owners were joint-stock companies. Compared to droshky rides, the cost of a horse-drawn ride was much more affordable: from 10 to 20 pfennigs (depending on the distance) versus 60 pfennigs for one passenger, 70 pfennigs for two, 80 for three and marks for four passengers on a droshky.
And in May 1895, the first trams appeared on the streets of Königsberg. In 1901, the city bought all the horse-drawn lines (with the exception of the lines in Hufen) and began electrifying them.

The strange structure ahead is a bridge.

The next gate is Friedrichsburg.


The Friedrichsburg Gate is the only historical gate in Kaliningrad that led not to the city of Königsberg, but to the fortress of the same name. In 1657, at the direction of the Great Elector Frederick William, south coast Friedrichsburg fortress was built on the Pregolya River. It was built according to the design of Christian Otter and was topographically shaped like a square. At its corners there were four bastions with euphonious names - Ruby, Emerald, Diamond and Pearl. In a quadrangular courtyard surrounded by earthen ramparts, there were various buildings: the commandant's office, barracks, prison house, barns, guardhouse, prison and church.

During the stay of the Great Russian Embassy in Königsberg in 1697 under the name of Sergeant Peter Mikhailov, Russian Tsar Peter I underwent artillery training in the Friedrichsburg and Pillaus fortresses. The training was conducted by 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 that said: “Peter Mikhailov is to be recognized and revered as an accomplished bomb-thrower, a careful and skillful firearms artist.”

In the middle of the 19th century, during the construction of new rampart fortifications around Königsberg, the Friedrichsburg fortress was rebuilt into a fort of the same name. In 1852, a brick gate was erected at Fort Friedrichsburg. The author of the design of these gates was August Stüler, the court architect of the Prussian king Frederick William IV. On August 23, 1910, Fort Friedrichsburg was excluded from the defensive fortifications of Königsberg and sold to the Imperial Railway. The ramparts were torn down and the ditches of Fort Friedrichsburg were filled up. The main part of its structures has been dismantled. Railroad tracks were laid across the territory previously occupied by this fort. Only the gates and barracks at the eastern defensive wall of the southeastern bastion have survived from the fort's buildings.
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 mechanism :) New railroad bridge was built in 1926. Its design was rotary, the upper part of the bridge was intended for trains, the lower for pedestrians and cars. The turning part was 57 meters long and weighed 1225 tons, and the bridge could be turned within 2-3 minutes. It was blown up during the retreat of German troops and restored in 1949. The design of the bridge was changed to a drawbridge. The 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 on the rusty metal. And I remembered my home and the stairs on the Embankment))

The views from the bridge are great!

Maybe the piles of some old bridge?

The Cathedral is visible in the distance.

The cat somehow looks unkindly at the guests of the city :)

"Rock garden" in one of the courtyards :)

What pleases me most here is the pink “toy” house)

The building on the right is also very interesting.


This is the YuI MIA - a police university. The building was built 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 Aster.
The railway leading to Pillau (now Baltiysk) passed through these gates. After the defenses of the city center were removed, a street was built along the former rampart. Thus, since then the gate has been inconspicuous, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.

There is an unexpected sign on the gate)))

Behind the gates beautiful park with ponds.

And this is the Ausfal Gate.
The first gate, approximately on the site of the current one, was built in the twenties of the XVII century, 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 through, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by its poorer architectural design). The new Ausphallian Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster.

From the very beginning, the gate crashed into the shaft and was actually below ground level. In the 20th century, the only gate passage was blocked. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold by the military department to the city.
During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior of the gate was divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed with hermetically sealed security doors.
After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for the nearby police school, and later as a sewage collector.

In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located level with the level of the roadway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died during the storming of Koenigsberg.

Koenigsberg was surrounded by seven bastion fronts, i.e. faces of a polygonal fortress belt, including bastions with an earthen rampart connecting them. Lunettes, cavaliers, redoubts and individual reduites built into the rampart and placed outside it were supposed to become auxiliary defensive structures. The system also included ditches fed by water, both branches of the Pregel and other reservoirs. Separate elements of the defensive circuit were the gates.

All city gates of Koenigsberg were locked at night and a guard was posted. Entry into the city from sunset to dawn was prohibited. The only exceptions were doctors and priests.

History of gate construction

On April 5, 1843, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV ordered the creation of a Second rampart fortification around Koenigsberg. The head of the engineering corps, Lieutenant General Ernest Ludwig von Aster, was assigned to develop the project.

Ludwig von Aster, when developing the project for the Second Rampart fortification of the city of Königsberg, took into account not only military purpose gate, but also aesthetic. All city gates were made in one of the directions of English neo-Gothic - Tudor style. Special attention was paid to the sculptures that decorated them.

Construction of the city gate began on August 30, 1843 from the bookmark of the Royal Gate. King Frederick William IV himself took part in this event. Construction was completed with the consecration of the Friedland Gate in 1862.

At the end of the 19th century, the construction of the fort belt “Night feather bed of Koenigsberg” began, which was placed a considerable distance from the city borders.

The second rampart fortification of the city of Koenigsberg lost its military significance.

The decree of August 25, 1910 ordered the exclusion of a number of defensive structures from the fortification system, including the city gates of Koenigsberg.

During World War II, many city ​​gates of Königsberg (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 over to vegetable warehouses, others to workshops. This continued until 1960, when, by a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, they were declared under state protection.

But the main revival of Königsberg's city gates took place in 2004. Then, for the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad, the Royal ones were restored.

Now these are seven attractions of the city. Some gates house museum exhibitions, while others house cozy cafes.

Royal

Royal Gate (German: Königstor) located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovsky Val. Originally, the Kalthof Gate was located on this site.

In 1717, they were demolished, and during the entry of Königsberg into Russia, they were rebuilt on this site by Russian engineers.

These gates were originally called Gumbinnensky, since it was to Gumbinnen (Gusev) that the road leading through them led. In 1811, the gate was renamed the Royal Gate, after the name of the street on which it was located (German: Königstrasse).

At the end of the first half of the 19th century, the modernization of city fortifications began in Königsberg. Then the old gates were demolished, and new ones were built in their place, which have survived to this day.

Solemn laying of the new Royal Gate took place on August 30, 1843 in the presence of King Frederick William 4, and construction was completed in 1850.

Koenigsberg built in pseudo-Gothic style and externally resemble a small castle. The author of the gate project was General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, the architect Friedrich August Stüler was responsible for the artistic design of the facades, and the bas-reliefs were created by the sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.

Royal Gate consist of one passage 4.5 meters wide, on either side of which there are casemates. On the city side, the casemates had windows and doors, and on the outside there were embrasures.

The edges of the roof are framed with battlements. There are four octagonal turrets at the corners of the building (in old drawings the turrets are round), and another four octagonal turrets are located on the high central part of the Royal Gate.

The façade on the city side is decorated with bas-reliefs of King Ottokar 2 of the Czech Republic (left), King Frederick 1 of Prussia (middle) and Duke of Prussia Albrecht 1 (right). Below the figures are their family coats of arms. Above the niches are the coats of arms of the Prussian lands - Samland and Natangia.

At the end of the 19th century, the ramparts lost their defensive functions, and at the beginning of the 20th century Royal Gate were sold by the War Ministry to the city government.

Later, in the 20th century, the ramparts flanking the gates were demolished as they interfered with 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 gate received minor damage.

After the war, the Royal Gate was used as bookstore No. 6, which closed in the 1990s. Afterwards they were used as a storage room.

In 2004, restoration work began, during which the Royal Gate building was completely restored, and the bas-reliefs of Frederick 1, Duke Albrecht 1 and Ottokar 2 were returned to their lost heads.

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 “The 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. There is an exhibition dedicated to the visit of Peter the Great to Königsberg.

From the city side	main facade
bas-reliefs	From the outside s

Rossgarten

Rossgarten Gate (German: 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 that was located on this site was built at the beginning of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Königsberg.

In 1852-1855, according to the project of the director of fortress construction Irfugelbrecht and engineer-lieutenant von Heil, new, more modern ones were built on the site of the first city gate.

The design of the gate facade was developed by the secret supreme building councilor August Stüler, head of the Technical Construction Deputation in Berlin. Stüler himself worked out the design of the façade, giving it distinct Gothic forms. The author of the sculptural decorations is Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.

Rossgarten Gate have only one passage four meters wide. There are three casemates on both sides of the passage. Thus façade of the Rossgarten Gate consists of seven openings. On the city side, the casemates have windows; on the outer side of the city, there are embrasures. Above the facade of the gate there is a row of battlements, divided into two halves by a raised central part.

On the sides the central part is framed by two high octagonal turrets. Above the entrance there is an observation platform fenced with battlements. To the right and left of the entrance there are arcades consisting of arches supported by columns. On the sides of the main arch there are two medallions-portraits depicting the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

From the outside, the passage is covered by a blockhouse, from which all-round rifle and artillery fire could be conducted, and a guardhouse, from the embrasures of which frontal and flank fire could be conducted. The guardhouse had swing gates. In front of the guardhouse there is a ditch with a drawbridge across it.

After the war Rossgarten Gate were restored and began to be used as a cafe-restaurant "Sunny Stone".

From the outside	From the city side

Rossgarten Gate	medallion-portrait of Scharnhorst	medallion-portrait of Gneisenau

Sackheimskie

Sackheim Gate (German: Sackheim tor) located at the intersection of Moskovsky Avenue and Litovsky Val Street. The first gate that was located on this site was built at the beginning of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Königsberg.

Construction Sackheim Gate, which has survived to this day was built in the mid-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 from red bricks of varying degrees of firing. The walls and decorative details are made from it. At the corners of the gate there are four towers: two round on the city side and two octagonal on the outside. On the city side they were decorated with bas-reliefs of Johann David Ludwig York and Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, on the outside - with an image of a black eagle.

At the end of the 19th century, the ramparts lost their defensive functions, and at the beginning of the 20th century Sackheim Gate were sold by the War Ministry to the city government, 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 stopped passing through them, which was allowed near the gate, thereby tearing down a significant part of the defensive rampart.

The gate was not damaged during the Second World War. After the war, they began to be used as a warehouse, which is the function they performed until 2006.

In 2006, restoration of the gate began. The Sackheim Gate was to house the federal government institution “Center for Standardization and Metrology,” its laboratories and a small museum where scales and other ancient measuring instruments could be seen.

On this moment(April 2011), no work is being done, and we can only dream about a museum.

From the city side	From the outside
From the city side	From the outside

Friedlandic

On the outskirts of the city, not far from the cattle yard, at the exit from Austrian Street (Kalinina Avenue), and its intersection with Schönfliesserallee (Dzerzhinsky Street), a rampart with a gate was built to cover the city from the south, along the road that led into the city Friedland (Pravdinsk).

First mention of Friedland Gate (German: Friedländer Tor) dates back 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. The French attempt to immediately take Konigsberg failed, but this fact is an exception, since the first rampart ring showed its inconsistency when the enemy attacked.

And already in 1857-1862, construction began on a new second defensive ring around the city. 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 leadership of the architect F. A. Stüler (1800-1865).

The Friedland Gate is made in the neo-Gothic style from red bricks of varying degrees of firing. The walls and decorative details are made from it. The gates had a large number of casemates with windows and embrasures. They had a scarp wall (the inner wall of the fortress rampart) with a patrol path behind it. This wall runs along the park and has survived to this day.

The gate casemates had not only rifle embrasures, but also cannon ones. The gates had two passages with pointed portals, and the portals had platbands repeating their shapes. The front part of the gate from the city side is divided 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 towers on the outside of the gate.

To create chiaroscuro and greater architectural expressiveness, the turrets and battlements of the parapet are decorated with decorative niches with multi-lobed and two-centered arches. Under the crenellated parapet stands out an ornament of repeating crosses, called bezant in ancient architecture.

On the city side, 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 there is an image of the fifteenth Grand Master Teutonic Order Siegfried von Feuchtwangen.

The author of the sculptures is Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer (1812-1864). The date of creation of the sculptures, discovered during restoration, is 1864.
Currently, the sculptures have been restored (the sculpture of Feuchtwangen - in 2005, the sculpture of Zollern - in 2008).

At the beginning of the 20th century, Friedland Gate they wanted to demolish it, but the gate, along with the entire second rampart, was sold by the War Ministry in 1910 to the city administration, and it was left as an architectural monument.

After the First World War, the Friedland Gate was closed to transport and became 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 on the side of the gate, and part of the defensive rampart was demolished.

During the Second World War, Friedland Gate had to become a military facility. At the top there are still traces of trenches and artillery pits. During the storming of the city in 1945, the gate was practically not damaged. What cannot be said about the Soviet period. In the post-war period, the gate was empty for a long time, then it housed a warehouse. The unique ceramic bricks were repeatedly whitewashed and painted, trees grew on the roof of the gate and eventually the gate was destroyed.

In 1988 Friedland Gate were transferred to the park named after the 40th anniversary of the Komsomol (now Yuzhny Park). With donations from individuals and public organizations The Friedland Gate was restored and a museum of East Prussia was opened in it.

When cleaning the park's ponds, various objects were found, which made up the first exhibition of the museum. There is a collection of weapons from the 19th and 20th centuries, a collection of wine and beer bottles, blacksmith and carpenter's tools, bricks with animal paw prints and craftsmen's marks.

Friedland Gate Museum founded by Alexander Georgievich Novik. Initially, the museum was actually private and had no official status. It was only in 2002 that the museum was officially created by order of the director of South Park.
Now the Friedland Gate Museum is the only municipal museum in Kaliningrad whose exhibition is dedicated to the history of pre-war Koenigsberg.

Permanent exhibitions of the museum:

“A fortified city, a garden city. Virtual walk along the streets of old Königsberg": an opportunity to see what the city was like in the 1895-1910s, look into shop windows.
“Konigsberg in the first half of the 20th century”: the life of townspeople in the first half of the 20th century, familiar things in an unusual form, famous trademarks.

“Civilization begins with sewerage”: the history of water supply and sewerage from ancient times to the present.

From the city side	From the outside

sculpture by Friedrich von Zollern	sculpture of Siegfried von Feuchtwangen

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 on this site were built in 1657. They were intended to protect the city in the southwestern section, and the road leading to Brandenburg Castle (now the village of Ushakovo).

Due to meager funding, a wooden gate was built with a roof that rested on an earthen rampart. To be safe, a ditch was dug in front of them and filled with water.

18th century, by order of the Prussian king Frederick 2, 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, guard garrison premises, service, utility and storage rooms.

In 1843, restoration work was carried out and the gate building was almost completely rebuilt.

The pediments became gabled, with cross-shaped sandstone flowers and stylized leaves.

On the gate there are sculptural portraits of Field Marshal Boyen (1771-1848), Minister of War, participant in the reforms in the Prussian army, and Lieutenant General Ernst von Aster (1778-1855), chief of the engineering corps, one of the authors of the Second Rampart fortification.

Brandenburg Gate- the only Königsberg city gate that has survived to this day, fulfilling its former transport function. The building of the Brandenburg Gate has been restored and is protected by the state as an architectural monument.

From the outside	From the city side

Ausfalskie

Ausfal (Pass) gate (German: Ausfalstor), located at the intersection of Gvardeisky Avenue (Deutschordenring) and Gornaya Street.

The first gate on the site of the current one was built in the twenties of the 17th century during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Koenigsberg.

In 1866 Ausfal Gate were completely rebuilt in 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 Königsberg.

Designed new Ausfal Gate architect Ludwig von Aster.

The Ausfal 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 in an arc with a bow arch, which is decorated with a casing with teeth. The side outer walls of the gate facing the moat are lined with granite slabs.

Nothing is known about the appearance of the facade of the gate from the city side, since the facade of the gate is covered with earth, and no photographs or drawings of it have survived. Above the passage there is a combat platform with a crenellated parapet. From the very beginning, the gate crashed into the shaft and was 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 Ausfal Gate was sold by the War Ministry to the city government, and the only gateway was blocked.

During the Second World War Ausfal Gate were converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior of the gate was divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed with hermetically sealed security doors.

After the war in Ausfal Gate were used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for a nearby police school, and even later they were used as a sewage collector.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located level with the level of the roadway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died during the storming of Koenigsberg.

Spring 2007 Ausfal and Railway Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates and place museum exhibitions in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.

Ausfalskie	sewage collector
Orthodox Chapel of St. George

Steindamm

Steindammer Gate (Steindammer thor), they were located in the area of ​​​​the current Victory Square. They were demolished in 1912, after the defensive structures of the second circuit became outdated, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.

They had two wide passages for vehicles and two passages for pedestrians. There were three barracks on the right and left.

Like most city gates in Königsberg, the building Steindamm Gate was built in the Gothic style.

The platbands of the arched gates had an arrow-shaped shape. The edges of the roof were crowned with teeth. Turrets rose along the edges of the pedestrian portals. In the center of the gate, in a niche, there was a statue of King Friedrich Wilheim IV.

Hollanderbaumsky

Hollanderbaum Gate (Hollanderbaum thor) were located at the intersection of General Butkov Street (Ausfalltorstr) and Marshal Bagramyan Embankment (Hollanderbaumstr), next to the double-tier bridge over the Pregolya River.

The gate was named after the area in which it was located (Hollenderbaum, "Dutch tree"). The gate was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, after the defensive structures of the second circuit became outdated, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.

Tragheimskie

Tragheim Gate were located in the area of ​​Gorky Street (Waldburgstr). They were demolished in 1910, after the defensive structures of the second circuit became outdated, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.

Railway

Railway gate (German: Eisenbahnhof Tor) were built in 1866-1869 according to the design of the architect Ludwig von Aster.

The railway gates had two spans (northern and southern), decorated with pointed arches. On the sides of the railway spans there are casemates with embrasures, and on the outside there is a guard room.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Deutschordenring street (German: Deutschordenring, now Gvardeysky Avenue) was laid over the gate.

After World War II, traffic on the line passing through the gate ceased due to the construction of a new one. The old tracks were finally dismantled only in the 1990s, and now a pedestrian path to Victory Park has been laid in their place.

Railway

It was grandiose project. Unfortunately, not everything has survived to this day.

In Soviet chronicles, Königsberg is called nothing less than a “fortress city” - and for good reason. Founded as the metropolis of a foreign and hostile land, at the gates of the restless east, growing for centuries around the castle, Königsberg could not help but be a fortress. The oldest walls of the 14th century, a kind of “zero belt”, covered, and from them two towers survived the war. The first belt was built in 1626-34 and already covered Forstadt, and the Second belt grew in 1843-62, and partially coincided with the first - collectively, what remained of them is known as the Inner Ring. Finally, the third belt (Outer Ring) was built in the 1870s-90s, runs approximately along the current bypass, and has been used for its intended purpose until the present day. The inner ring, which lost its defensive significance by the beginning of the twentieth century, is in fact the center of Königsberg, the edge of the “donut hole”, into which two train stations are woven. It is also impressive that British aviation, having burned the city center to the ground, spared transport hubs and fortifications - the Inner Ring has been preserved almost entirely from the pre-war period, its main losses are associated with the development of Koenigsberg at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I will divide the hike along the ring (which in practice was not continuous) into three parts, and in the first we will examine the South Station, the adjacent old district of Haberberg and the part of the fortifications that covered it. I’ll also make a reservation in advance that I’m a layman on the topic of fortification, I’m even confused in the terminology, so I’m counting on corrections and comments.

In the introductory frame - Friedland Gate, extreme point route. To the right is the island of Lomze, the bridge to which is a little further, and I didn’t go there anymore, so let’s go counterclockwise. Most of the objects marked on the diagram have survived, except for the Hollenderbaum Gate, the section from the Krausek Bastion to the Tragheim Gate inclusive, and individual bastions along the entire length of the ring. The southern station is located approximately on the site of the Brandenburg Bastion. I applied the green stripes to the diagram (photographed at the Friedland Gate) myself, and they indicate the “boundaries” of my posts:

2.

We will start our hike not from the Friedland Gate, but from the South Station, which has been the main one in Königsberg and Kaliningrad since its founding. As already mentioned in the post, the railway came to Königsberg in 1857, and in 1862 it merged with the railways of Russia. Koenigsberg was an important transport hub, but at the same time it did not have a clearly defined Main Station - only a few small stations, some of which, existing and disappeared, we will still meet. Conventionally, the main one could be considered the complex of the Eastern and Southern stations - the oldest in the city, they were located quite far from the current Southern one.

3.

In general, it was no longer an ordnung, but some kind of mess, so in the 1920s the Königsberg transport hub underwent a comprehensive reconstruction. The South Station in its current form opened in 1929, and its structure is clearly visible on Google Maps:

4.

In front of the station there is a huge (420x160m) and empty Kalinin Square, and a simple but stylish station building in the style of “new materiality” is the most impressive object on it:

5.

On the facade there is the coat of arms not of the Soviet Union, but of the RSFSR separately. I think it's quite a rare case?

5a.

Inside, it seemed to me that the station is a bit cramped, but very civilized:

6.

Its main attraction is a huge (180 by 120 meters) three-span landing stage with the inscriptions “Welcome Kaliningrad” on the ends. Similar landing stages were preserved in the former USSR in Moscow (Kyiv and Kazansky railway stations), St. Petersburg (Vitebsky railway station), and in our time, a landing stage has also been acquired. In Germany this was commonplace. And as you can see, such a relatively fragile contraption survived both August 1944 and April 1945:

7.

The station is located not at the middle, but at the northern end of the landing stage. The second entrance is through the tunnel from the other end:

8.

The landing stage is not very high (in Lviv it is noticeably higher, not to mention Moscow-Kievskaya), but it seems immensely wide. Long distance trains Now there are about three pairs going from here (to Moscow every day, to St. Petersburg every other day and to Adler sometimes), and about a dozen suburban ones. And here, perhaps, there is the greatest variety of tracks: not only are there both diesel and electrified ones (to Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk), but there is also a Stephenson gauge track (the Kaliningrad-Gdansk-Berlin train used to run).

9.

The station here is purely passenger, freight tracks do not enter it (the huge Kaliningrad-Sortirovochny station is visible on the satellite image):

10.

The northern exit is marked by a very stylish control center:

11.

Yuzhny is a small railway museum that hangs exactly over the platforms of the bus station. The bus station here is typical, small but busy. At all, bus service the region is organized very competently.

12.

The ensemble is completed by a German viaduct, the “tunnel” under which is painted with surprisingly high-quality graffiti:

13.

The plots are very different. Take a closer look - the gray creature is pulling a train from its belly:

14.

Overall, one of the most impressive train stations I've ever seen... as well as the Northern one. But Königsberg’s transport mosaic is not limited to these two stations...
And from the overpass we will first go clockwise - to the Friedland Gate. The railway goes south, and our path is along Kalinin Avenue, along the ramparts, on which and under which, at the end of the 19th century, South Park was laid out, I apologize for the name:

15.

In which there are two ravelins. Closer to the station - Haberberg:

16.

17.

18.

Between them is an obelisk. Under the Nazis, the park was named after Horst Wessel, a young activist, author of the NSDAP anthem, who was killed by the Communists back in 1930. Under the Soviets, the park was renamed 40th Anniversary of the Komsomol, and in the place where the monument to Wessel stood, a stele to Komsomol members was erected.

19.

20.

And finally - Friedland Gate, the youngest on the Inner Ring (1857-62). There were gates with a similar name on the first ring, but they were located somewhat closer to the center, and the name in both cases came from the town of Friedland (now Pravdinsk), which was located on that side. At the old Friedland Gate, the Germans held back Napoleon's army for several days, giving the Russians time to retreat beyond the Neman.

21.

You can climb up the gate, but you can’t approach it from the outside yet:

22.

The two sides of the gate are decorated with sculptures of the Teutonic commander Friedrich von Zollern (1412-16) and Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen (who moved the capital of the Order to Marienburg), recreated in 2005.

23.

The fact is that since the 1990s, the gate has been occupied by a museum founded by enthusiast Alexander Novik, and only in 2002 received official status. For Kaliningrad this was a breakthrough - if the Museum of the World Ocean showed itself to be an effective organization, then this museum is an example to follow. It was the first museum specializing in pre-war Königsberg. In 2007, at the all-Russian competition "Changing Museum in a Changing World" it took second place after the Tretyakov Gallery.

24.

Munchausen on the wall:

24a.

However, I was unlucky - a large (and most interesting) part of the museum is currently under reconstruction, so I was somewhat disappointed. But it’s clear that the museum is done with taste:

25.

Between the railway and Bagration Street, the former district of Haberberg (“Oat Mountain”) stretches along the rampart. It is believed that there was either a pasture here, or planting oats for the Teutonic cavalry, and the suburb of Haberberg took shape at the same time as Rossgarten and Tragheim - in the 17th century: in 1613 a community was formed, which by 1652 had grown to a full-fledged suburb, which in 1724 , like others, became part of the united city. As far as I understand, the 17th century Haberberg shaft did not span, which was corrected when the second shaft was built.

26.

In Haberberg, cemeteries were “evicted” from the overpopulated center, so a small area on the outskirts had as many as three churches. The Trinity Haberberg Church has been known since 1652, Kant was baptized there... and when the church burned down and was rebuilt in 1748-52, according to legend, it was Kant who proposed equipping it with a lightning rod. It stood not far from the current Kalinin Square:

27.

Luther Church with a 67-meter tower was built in 1907-10, and was located near the barracks shown above. The church had a reinforced concrete dome, an organ and steel bells with a very unusual “heavy” ringing. This is the last church in Königsberg, purposefully demolished under the Soviets in 1976. Perhaps, in general, the last temple destroyed by Soviet power...

28.

Finally, the Catholic Church of the Holy Family (1904-07) is located on the same line with the already mentioned obelisk of the Komsomol. Since 1980, it has housed the Philharmonic and Organ Hall.

29.

Architecturally, this is perhaps the best stylization of “Hansean Gothic” among the surviving Kaliningrad churches:

30.

I walked in this area in the evening of the first day - the train arrived at the South Station at about half past five, and I had an hour and a half. The following shots are no longer Haberberg, but Forstadt, partially shown in. Forshtadt stands out among other areas with its gloomy architecture, shabbyness and constant red color.

31.

31a.

32.

33.

34.

Especially good is this house in Maly Lane - a former telegraph office:

35.

Or rather, its gate in the style of “new materiality” is one of my favorite works of Old Königsberg:

36.

And a whole block of the Kaliningrad Marine Fishery College:

37.

There are some visual aids in the yard:

38.

And the horned main building is the former St. George's Hospital (1894-97), founded in 1329 as a leper colony, and in subsequent centuries it was destroyed and reborn many times:

39.

I forgot to photograph one iconic building on Leninsky Prospekt (which connects Yuzhny and Northern stations) - Directorate railways in Königsberg, which since 1895 occupied an apartment building, built, by the way, on the site of the school where Kant studied in the 1730s. Photo from Wikipedia, 2002:

40.

And this is Haberberg again, the end of Lenin Avenue:

41.

We return to the station. Adjacent to it is an extremely (like the entire complex) stylish railway post office (pay attention to the portal):

42.

View through the same gate. The shot was taken in full view of the employees - no one said a word. They probably decided that the German...

43.

The station buildings stretch for another couple of hundred meters:

44.

Opposite is the brick fence of the Altstadt and Kneiphof cemeteries, as already mentioned, those “evicted” here in the 18th century:

45.

There was nothing left of them except the wall:

45a.

Nearby is the Brandenburg Gate (just like in Berlin!) above Bagration Street. Brandenburg (now Ushakovo) is a castle by the bay, on the road to Balga... and then just to that Barndenburg, where Potsdam and Berlin are. This gate is the only one in the Inner Ring that is passable, even with tram tracks.

46.

However, we do not go under the gate, but parallel to it - the road rises to an overpass, parallel to which a railway bridge runs. Below are the tracks of the freight station, somewhere on the right side of it stood the Eastern Station:

47.

Some of the warehouses here are still German, and the high-rise buildings are already beyond Pregolya:

48.

Next is a noisy road and a dull industrial zone. The railway embankment, so similar to a rampart, has another stunningly stylish tower, marked on Wikimapia as the “mechanical centralization point of the South Station”.

49.

And behind it you can see the railway bridge (1915-27)... about which in the next part.

FAR WEST-2013