The square's symmetry
Two matching domes framing the Gendarmenmarkt.
Jörg Zägel — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ajepbah — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Leonhard Lenz — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC BY-SA 4.0
The exteriors are near-identical but the contents are entirely different: this building holds the parliament's exhibition on the history of democracy and is free to enter, while the one opposite holds the Huguenot Museum about the French Protestant refugees Prussia took in, and its dome can be climbed for a fee for the view over the square. If you have time for one, choose by interest: political history here, the view there.
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The Deutscher Dom is one of two nearly identical buildings framing the Gendarmenmarkt — probably the handsomest square in Berlin. The other is the French Cathedral, with the concert hall standing between them. The symmetry is entirely deliberate: Frederick the Great ordered two matching domes built in 1785 to frame the square visually. The name misleads. Neither was ever a cathedral. The French building was a church for the Huguenots who fled religious persecution in France for Prussia, and the German one served the German Reformed congregation. The word Dom here comes from the French dôme, meaning dome, rather than from cathedral. Today the building does not function as a church at all: it houses a permanent exhibition of the German parliament on the history of democracy in Germany — from the revolution of 1848 through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship and the division, to the present. Entry is free, and the exhibition is among the clearest available accounts of German political history.
Two matching domes framing the Gendarmenmarkt.
From the 1848 revolution to the present.
Gendarmenmarkt 1, 10117 Berlin