Look up at the Brandenburg Gate. The Quadriga has a journey of its own: Berlin, Paris, then Berlin again. I wanted to know how it came back.
Berlin’s official tourism account dates its removal by Napoleon to 1806 and its return to 1814, after his forced abdication. The sculpture’s journey is part of the history of the gate itself.
It is an easy detail to miss if the stop is only about taking a photograph. Looking up changes the question from “Which landmark is this?” to “What has happened to it?” This was one of those pauses in the Berlin leg of the trip.
Another Berlin stop brought me back to the League of Prizren and the sequence of events in 1878.