The position of the Brandenburg Gate was "of its kind undisputedly the most beautiful in the whole world" and therefore he took the Propylaeum on the Acropolis in Athens "as the model", as Carl Gotthard Langhans wrote on his design which was implemented in 1789-91. The present emblem of the city was only one of a total of 18 city gates; the position and names of the other gates can often still be seen on a street map. But this gate was by far the most elaborate - most gates just consisted of two simple pillars. Construction work began in the year of the French Revolution, and it was the first building in Berlin's architectural history to be based on models from Greek antiquity - a trend which eventually led Berlin to be called "Athens on the Spree". The gate with its angled side wings (the guard houses) originally joined directly onto the city wall, but when the city wall was demolished in 1867-68, pedestrian passages were created in the side halls and column halls were built in front of the plain western front.

The gate has five openings which are eleven metres in depth and

separated by walls, and their ends are covered by Doric columns. Above the Doric entabulature and the steps of the attic is the five metre high copper "Quadriga" with the goddess of victory, designed by Gottfried Schadow and cast in bronze by Emanuel Jury. The goddess Victoria is shown in reliefs as a bringer of peace, and a time of peace is portrayed as a time of cultural abundance. Originally, it was even suggested that the gate should be entitled "Peace Gate". The central figure in the reliefs of the openings through the gate is Heracles.

In its design, the gate reverses the significance of mediaeval city gates, in that it represents the openness and cultural generosity of the self-­assured city of residence.

In 1807 the Quadriga was taken away to Paris by Napoleon, but in 1814 it was brought back in a triumphal procession. After the structure had thus become a symbol of victory in the liberation wars, Schinkel added an iron cross to the crown on the rod of the goddess of victory. After war damage, the gate was restored in the 1950s, and with the ­renovated Quadriga (which was again restored in 1990/91), the gate spent the years from 1961 to 1989 in no-man's-land close to the Wall to West Berlin.

The gate was originally integrated into the continuous complex of buildings around the rectangular Pariser Platz, but in and after the ­Second World War all of the other buildings disappeared apart from ­remains of the Academy of Arts. Since 1995, reconstruction of Pariser Platz in its historical dimensions has been in progress. The residential buildings which once joined the gate at the sides, i.e. the house of the painter Max Liebermann to the north and Haus Sommer to the south, have been rebuilt in simplified historical form (to designs by J.P. Kleihues).