Berlin's Klosterruine: the Gothic brick church a stone's throw from Alexanderplatz

At Klosterstraße 73a, in Berlin's Mitte district, the roofless walls of a thirteenth-century Gothic church still stand. It is the Ruine der Franziskaner-Klosterkirche, the church of the Franciscan friary that Berliners called "Graues Kloster", the Grey Monastery, after the colour of the friars' habit. The surprising thing is its location: it sits less than five minutes on foot from Alexanderplatz, and yet the vast majority of visitors walk right past without noticing, heading for the television tower or the shopping malls.

The origins

The church was founded around 1250, when Berlin was still a small merchant settlement on the Spree. The first stone building was soon replaced by a three-nave basilica made entirely of brick, begun at the end of the thirteenth century and completed in the first half of the fourteenth. This detail carries a weight that goes beyond aesthetics: it is one of the first buildings in the city made of brick and marks the beginning of brick Gothic (Backsteingotik), the style that would later define many churches in northern Germany. With the Protestant Reformation the friary was dissolved in 1539; the adjoining buildings later housed Berlin's first printing works and a school whose classrooms saw names like Schinkel and Bismarck.

The destruction

The ruin you see today is the result of the war. On 3 April 1945 an Allied bombing raid destroyed the church: the vaults, parts of the walls and the towers collapsed. In the following years, the works for the underground railway and the postwar clearances carried off further pieces, while the friary buildings were demolished entirely. The perimeter walls were made safe between the late 1950s and the 1960s, and a broader restoration in 2002-2005 saved the structure from final collapse. What remains is a skeleton of red brick open to the sky: pointed arches, empty windows, buttresses. Through the openings you catch, unexpectedly, the modern Fernsehturm: the contrast between the medieval ogives and the concrete antenna is the reason it's worth keeping your camera close.

A space for art

Since 2016 the site has belonged to the district of Mitte (Bezirksamt Mitte) and is used as an exhibition space for contemporary art. Every year artists are invited to create installations conceived specifically for this space, in dialogue with the history of the place and with the great Klosterviertel-Molkenmarkt regeneration project. So you may find yourself among the roofless naves with a work installed in the middle, and there's almost never anyone else around: the crowds are practically nonexistent.

Getting there

Getting there is easy: the Klosterstraße underground stop (U2 line) is right next door, a station with history-themed decorations that is itself worth a look. Entry to the ruin is free and the area is barrier-free. The hours given by the management run from April to September, every day from 10 am to 6 pm; in winter the installations can only be seen from outside, through the railings. Since the calendar of exhibitions, guided tours and concerts changes from season to season, it's best to check the updated dates on the official site klosterruine.berlin before you go. A half-hour stop, easily combined with a visit to Alexanderplatz, to see the oldest piece of Berlin's earliest days.