While I went to 'Christmas Eve Services' here and posted about it, I thought might as well take a proper tour of the place, especially after I saw you could go up the dome and then outside for a view of Berlin.
So roughly speaking, there has been a 'parish' church on this site since 1451, however the cathedral as it now looks was finished in 1905. And here you go, a look into the main chamber. VERY impressive...
Love this pic!
Where the Emperor sat during services...
I didn't realize this, but Wikipedia just explained, that while the whole area became Lutheran, one of the Hohenzollern's later became a Calvinist. So Berliner Dom was actually the Calvinist 'parish church' for Berlin and the royal family, whilst the rest of the people were mostly Lutherans. Then the Prussian king in 1817 in a very 'Constantine' kind of way, banded the Calvinist and Lutheran churches together in Prussia and hence, in Germany, people don't say they are Protestant or Lutheran, they say they are 'Evangelical' = union of the Calvinist and Lutheran faiths. So here we have Luther...
and then we have Calvin....interesting, so interesting...
Beautiful interior!
I love the stained glass above the altar. All of this is recent renovation. WWII bombing raids did their damage to the Dom and the DDR left it to rot for a long while...
The impressive organ - me likey....
This is the view from the side where Imperial ministers and government agents would have sat (kind of off to the right (haha, the right hand ;) of the Emperor's box)...
I am still confused, but apparently this is the model of the 'messenger angel' that was on top of the cathedral roof....LDS people, take notice! ;)
DON'T LOOK DOWN!! AHHH! There is the Spree river....
This is looking north from the dome....
There is the New Synagogue!
Museum Island!
Looking westwards....you can see Potsdamer Platz in the background...
Booyah!
These are the ruins of the old Berlin Castle that used to stand right next to the cathedral....
The green grass is where until 1953(?) the Berlin Castle stood, and then the commi's blew it up and built their 'Palace of the People', aka East German Parliament. They found that the People's Palace was leaking asbestos into the ground water (likely story in my opinion) and decided to tear it down/take it apart. I think it's kyoot how someone put a big heart in the grass...
Looking out towards Alexanderplatz, you have the Rotes Rathaus (Berlin's Red City Hall); the 2-spired Nikolai Church where Berlin began; and then the TV Tower in all of it's socialistic glory! ;)
Off to the West, THE FUNKTURM! LOVE YOU, FUNKTURM!
Back inside the Berliner Dom. Danke sehr, you are wunderbarly beautiful :)
Roughly, since the mid-1500's the Hohenzollern (Hohenzollern is to Prussia, what the Windsor's are to Britain) have used the site as a crypt for family members. The crypt was badly damaged during WWII, but they have now been restored....all people and famous people and queens and kings and....yeh, there they all are....things like this really make me ponder death and what you spend your life trying to do and accumulate or accomplish....few today care if these people ever lived and fewer care if they have cool, beautiful coffins....I'm not criticizing them, honestly, just it makes me wonder what all the gold, marble, etc., is for when we're all going arrive at the same end....
This is a statue of Faith, Hope and Charity in the crypt....I liked it...
As I finished the crypt, I was surprised to see that during the day, while tourists can wander around, the Dom is open to weddings! There they were, the couple about to be married, and I watched them 'walk down the aisle', etc. That is one thing interesting about the 'Evangelical Church' - women can be pastors...so a woman was performing the wedding ceremony...
Well Berlin Dom! Thanks a mil! You're grreeat!
