Which German architect designed the Brandenburg Gate?

The German architect who designed the Brandenburg Gate was Carl Gotthard Langhans.

Langhans designed Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate for King Frederick William II of Prussia. Construction began in 1788 and the gate was completed in 1791, replacing an earlier city entrance. It was conceived as part of the king’s effort to transform Berlin into a monumental cultural capital.

The gate is an early and influential example of neoclassical, specifically Greek Revival, architecture in Germany. Langhans based its central gateway on the Propylaea, the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Twelve fluted Doric columns form five passageways, while a bronze quadriga by sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow crowns the structure.

The name can be confused with Karl Friedrich Schinkel, another major Prussian neoclassical architect who worked a generation later. Schinkel did not design the Brandenburg Gate. Langhans’s monument later became a symbol of Berlin, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification in 1989–90.