City gates of Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad). Gates of Kaliningrad: eight city gates of Königsberg Entrance to the Königsberg gates was permitted only
The center of Kaliningrad is surrounded by eight gates, of which there were even ten previously. Each gate has its own history, its own character and its own secrets. You definitely need to see them with your own eyes!
Ausfal Gate
Ausfal Gate (from the German Ausfalstor - gate for sorties) one of the simplest and most rebuilt gates in Konigsberg. The first gate was erected in the 17th century, in the 19th century it was used exclusively for pedestrians, and now the gate is completely blocked.
Location: southwestern corner of the intersection of Gvardeyskogo Avenue and st. Mountain.
What's interesting: an Orthodox chapel was built on top of the Ausfal Gate covering.
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate This is the only city gate still in use. They were built in 1657, and in 1843 they were almost completely rebuilt in the same place. Their style differs from all other gates in the city due to their prominent triangular pediments. The gate has two passages along a road covered with paving stones and tram tracks.
Location: at the end of the street. Bagration at the crossing to the street. Suvorova (Berlinskaya).
What's interesting: the side parts of the gate were used on foot, but are now walled up.
Railway gate
Railway gate– a rather laconic brick gate through which there is a pedestrian passage. In the old days, a railway route ran along them to modern Baltiysk. There are still rails, but there are no trains.
Location: under the roadway of Gvardeysky Avenue.
What's interesting: on the building you can find a construction date of 1866-1869.
Sackheim Gate
Sackheim Gate Impressive with powerful towers that are hollow from the inside. The gate dates back to the 17th century, but the current structure was erected in the mid-19th century. In the 20th century, the casemates were partially demolished to make way for the addition of residential buildings.
Location: at the intersection of Ave. Moscow and Lithuanian shaft.
What’s interesting: the Brandenburg Gate is now used for cultural events based on the “Gate” art platform.
Royal Gate
Royal Gate - This is a very massive, complete structure not burdened with secondary buildings. Initially it was the Kalthof Gate, then the Gumbinnen Gate, and in 1811 it was renamed the Royal Gate. Like all gates of Königsberg, the structure has undergone many reconstructions.
Location: at the intersection of st. Frunze and Litovsky Val.
What's interesting: such a mighty gate managed to be a warehouse, a store and a cafe, but now there is a museum of the World Ocean with samples of amber from all over the world.
Rossgarten Gate
Rossgarten Gate have a main opening and six casemates - three on each side of the opening. The casemates are an embrasure for firing on the outside, and windows on the inside. It is noteworthy that the outer side of the gate does not have any decoration.
Location: at the intersection of st. Chernyakhovsky and A. Nevsky.
What’s interesting: now there is a cafe at the gate, and the casemates serve as a wardrobe, utility room and kitchen.
Friedland Gate
Friedland Gate take their name from the city of Friedland (now Pravdinsk). The two main passages are blocked; there is no wall or middle part on the city side. It is known that the first Friedland Gate of the 17th century was located in a slightly different place. The gate was erected at its current location around 1857-1862.
Location: intersection of Kalinin Avenue and st. Dzerzhinsky.
What's interesting: in the 80s, antique objects were found in the gate, which can now be viewed in the operating museum.
Friedrichsburg Gate
Friedrichsburg Gate - This is the remnant of a bastion fortress called Friedrichsburg. The gate even now resembles a medieval building in appearance - four rounded towers, Gothic false windows and battlement-shaped parapets.
The former fortress was erected in 1657 by order of the great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm. The gates themselves were built already in 1852 according to the drawings of F.A. Stuler.
Location: st. Portovaya, 39.
What's interesting: in 1697, Peter I honored the fortress with a visit to study bombardment.
By visiting the 8 amazing gates of Königsberg, you will discover that you can eat, have a cultural time and even pray at the gates.
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formed in history for centuries,
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(Horst Glas "Königsberg")
The ancient gates of Königsberg... Like doors to the past, they invite us to travel back several centuries to good old Königsberg - the capital of East Prussia.
Alas, not every modern Kaliningrader will find something interesting and exciting today in the silent fragments of the once majestic city. People immersed in the bustle of their thoughts and rhythm modern city, habitually rush past ancient gate without paying any attention to them. And only nostalgic groups of German tourists tirelessly click their camera shutters to capture in photographs the history of Königsberg, which continues to this day...
Back in 2011, I planned to release a series of posts on all the surviving gates of our city, but I never realized this idea. Well, maybe the time has come now? The gates of Königsberg have always been something special for me. As part of my work, I often visit the area of the Royal and Rossgarten Gates. And every time they catch my eye again and again, and my imagination paints a picture of past centuries...
Here is a mustachioed guard, hiding from the hot July sun in the shadow of the gate, checking the documents of a merchant hurrying to the city. Nimble boys run through the gate like lightning, rushing to plunge into the cool waters of a nearby pond, and an elegant lady under a snow-white umbrella is animatedly talking about something with a cheerful soldier... Peace and tranquility reigns everywhere, the warm sun is shining, birds are singing in the green trees, and the air is filled aroma from a nearby bakery...
I want to start my story about the gates of Königsberg with a general narrative about when and why the city gates began to be built, and then I will introduce you to the first gates on our route - the Ausfal and Railway gates.
It is logical that any gate should lead somewhere. For example, the very first gates of Königsberg were erected in the 13th century at the same time as the Royal Castle and led to its courtyard. A century later, when the city grew and was surrounded by a wall, the gates became an integral part of the fortress.
A more serious rampart fortification was erected in 1626 - 1634 and surrounded Königsberg on all sides. The fortification consisted of several bastions and half-bastions, as well as 9 gates. In addition, on the sea side, in 1657, the powerful fort of Friedrichsburg was founded.
And already two centuries later, King Frederick William IV issues a decree on the beginning of the construction of the Second Rampart fortification, which generally follows the contours of the previous one. The powerful Don and Wrangel towers, the defensive barracks Kronprinz and the Astronomical Bastion are being built, and new fortified gates are being erected on the site of the previous ones. The construction of the Royal Gate was the first to begin in 1843, and construction was completed with the construction of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
However, already at the beginning of the 20th century, the Second Rampart fortification lost its military significance and was partially demolished, freeing up new areas for urban construction in the rapidly developing Königsberg. So the beautiful Steindamm and Tragheim gates disappeared from the face of the earth, and in their place the Hansa Platz square, now known as Victory Square, was built. Time has not been kind to the Hollanderbaum Gate...
02. The unpreserved Steindamm Gate of Königsberg.
But the remaining seven gates of the Second Rampart have survived to this day, and it is about them that my story will be written.
Our route begins from Victory Square - the heart of modern Kaliningrad, where perhaps the most beautiful gates of the city were once located - Steindamm. We will return to these gates, but for now we will head along Gvardeysky Avenue, starting from Victory Square, to Victory Park and memorial complex"1200 guardsmen."
It is here, across the road from the Astronomical Bastion and a hundred meters from the obelisk, that the most inconspicuous city gates are located - Ausfalskie. Now on their roof there is a small Orthodox chapel of St. St. George the Victorious, built in 1995, but the gate itself can be seen by going down to the small lake in the park, formed from a former moat.
03. Chapel of St. St. George the Victorious on... the roof of the gate.
Why are the gates below level? earth's surface and where do they lead? To do this, let’s get acquainted with the history of the construction of these gates.
Ausfal Gate(German) Ausfalltor), translated as “Exit Gate,” were designed back in the 17th century and were part of the First Rampart fortification of Königsberg. The author of the project is an unknown military engineer.
These gates were exclusively pedestrian and served as a passage through the earthen rampart. On the field side of the gate there was a small bridge across the fortress moat. The bridge itself is long gone... only the preserved shore supports made of brick and granite still remind us of the past. And if you look closely at the tree-covered slope, you can still see (especially in winter), a road that has not yet been destroyed by time, leading to the bridge over the moat.
The Ausfal Gate is not distinguished by its bright, pompous architecture and is more reminiscent of a powerful firing point, the casemates of which bristled with numerous embrasures for direct and side fire at the enemy. The high walls of the casemates are half lined with granite slabs, protecting the brickwork from water and snow. And the only decoration of the gate was five brick battlements above the arched passage.
At the beginning of the 20th century, during the modernization of the rampart fortification, the Ausfal Gate was below ground level and was turned into a pedestrian tunnel, and a little later the city part of the gate was completely covered with earth.
During the Great Patriotic War, the gate was converted into a command post-dugout with hermetically sealed concrete premises. During the fighting, the Ausfal Gate was practically not damaged, and already in the post-war period a warehouse and bomb shelter for the Kaliningrad Police School (the modern Kaliningrad Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation), located next door, were built in it.
At the moment, it is not possible to get inside the gate, but in 2007 the Ausfal Gate was transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum, which inspires some hope that this gate will someday be restored and become available for careful inspection by tourists. Although, 10 years have already passed, and things are still there...
11. Once upon a time there was a bridge leading to the gate.
The second gate that we will meet is located next to the Ausfalskie. They are called - Railway(German) Eisenbahnhof Tor). Through this gate, also designed in the second half of the 19th century by Ludwig von Aster, passed the old Railway on Pillau (Baltiysk).
Architecturally, the gate has two separate arched bays with barrel vaults. And if from the outside everything was quite modest, then from the city side the arches were made in the form of beautiful pointed portals.
On the sides of the gate there are classic casemates, and on the field side the gate is equipped with a guard room - a guardhouse and two gates, similar to the claws of a giant crab.
Once upon a time, gate leaves were installed on them, by closing them it was possible to turn this section of the gate into a small courtyard. It is worth noting that this is the only gate with such an architectural solution.
Besides this there was another one at the gate interesting feature... Rectangular recesses were made in the walls of the arches (from floor to ceiling) - fines. In them, like “blinds,” rectangular beams or sleepers were laid horizontally, making it possible to completely close the passage through the gate.
15. Recesses are visible - fines. Archival photo of the author, 2011.
Moreover, it was impossible for the enemy to dismantle such a barrier, unless, of course, they fired at him from a cannon at direct fire. Therefore, the effectiveness of this fortification barrier in the 19th century was very doubtful...
When the gate lost its defensive purpose, a highway, which turned the gate into a real bridge across the railway tracks, which were dismantled only in the early 90s of the 20th century.
Currently, the gate partially fulfills its function. Cars sometimes pass through them, but mostly the gates are used by residents of nearby houses, since a pedestrian path to Victory Park passes through them - perfect place For cultural recreation. Like the Ausfal Gate, in 2007 the Railway Gate was transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum.
And recently, a digital Planetarium of the Center for the Popularization of Sciences named after F.V. was opened in the Railway Gate. Bessel. In the future, in one of the arches of the monument building, the tenants intend to open a gallery in which works by astrophotographers, photographers, as well as children's creative works will be exhibited. And on December 14, 15, 21 and 22, the Scientific Film Festival will be held at the gates, within the framework of which full-length films will be shown to the audience documentaries about science from around the world, created over the past five years.
Among the funny oddities associated with this gate, I would like to note a sign from the “don’t believe your eyes” series, explaining to us that this is not a gate at all, but a church of the 19th century... The sign hung on the wall of the gate for a long time and only after a recent restoration it was removed and replaced to the modern correct one.
This concludes the first part of my story about the Königsberg Gate, and in the second part we will get acquainted with the Friedrichsburg and Brandenburg Gates.
To be continued...
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Leaving the Railway Gate behind, I went out onto the street. General Butkov (formerly Ausfalltor Straße), and then to Gvardeysky Prospekt (formerly Deutschordenring). My further path lay in the direction of the road and railway bridge over the Pregolya River.A couple of hundred meters later, a huge bulk of a two-tier bridge appeared in front of me, and a little to the right I could see the building of the former Holländerbaum station, which has survived to this day. Now the Kaliningrad regional customs office is located in this building.
But before stepping on the bridge, I decided to go to the edge of the embankment to admire the view of the Pregolya River, still frozen in ice and dusted with snow shining in the sun.
The weather was fairly clear and the opposite shore was clearly visible. There, proudly rising above the low warehouse buildings, could be seen the powerful towers of the Friedrichsburg Gate. It is these gates that are the next stopping point on our journey.
After taking a few shots of the gate visible on the opposite bank, I headed towards the thundering double-decker bridge (formerly Reichsbahnbrucke). The original bridge was blown up by the retreating Germans in 1945, but already in 1959-60. the bridge was completely restored and rebuilt. The unique mechanism, which unfolds a 1000-ton colossus in just 2.5 minutes, was irretrievably destroyed, so the modern bridge acquired a new, vertical, adjustable mechanism that still works properly to this day.
It is worth noting that here, not far from the bridge, at the intersection of the street. General Butkov (formerly Ausfalltor Straße) and Marshal Bagramyan embankment (formerly Holländerbaum Straße), there was previously another gate - the Hollenderbaum Gate, which was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century.
After crossing the bridge, turn left onto the street. Portovaya (formerly Friedrichsburger Straße), where, among numerous warehouses and auto centers, we are located, Friedrichsburg Gate(German) Friedrichsburg Tor). Looking ahead, I will say that these gates are not related to the city gates of Koenigsberg, since they did not lead to the city, but to a small fort, but, nevertheless, they are beautiful and interesting in their own way.
A long time ago, in 1657, on the left bank of the Pregel, to protect Königsberg from the sea, as well as control the waterway to the Pillau fortress, by order of the Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm, the Friedrichsburg fortress was founded, and the gate of the same name, built a little later, served passage function through the protective rampart of the fortress.
The fortress project was developed by the Prussian engineer and mathematician Christian Otter (1598-1660). He invented the Dutch system of building fortresses, which he successfully applied in the construction of the Friedrichsburg fortress, surrounding it with a wide moat filled with water. The construction of the fortress was led by Georg Neumann. The first commandant of the Friedrichsburg fortress was the Dutch engineer-Colonel Gerhard von Belgulm.
The shape of the small fortress resembled a regular square, protected on four sides by earthen bastions. Inside the fortress there were barracks, a prison, food and weapons warehouses, a customs service and a small church. In 1858, the modernized fortress, which received the status of a fort, became part of the Second Rampart fortification. At the same time, according to the design of Friedrich August Stüler, the brick Friedrichsburg Gate was added to the fort from the city side.
The gate, striking in its heaviness, was built from burnt clinker bricks in the Tudor style, an English neo-Gothic style. The vaults of the through passage are made in the traditional barrelhouse style, and the casemates located on the sides of the gate are made in the cross style.
If we look closely at the gate, we will see that the walls, as well as the complex architectural decorations above the entrance arch, are made of bricks of various colors and shapes, which indicates the high skill of the builders of the 19th century. On the front facade of the gate, the black Gothic inscription “Friedrichsburg” and a high relief of the Prussian eagle have been preserved to this day.
To the left and right of the arched passage are massive round towers decorated with decorative battlements. The names of the towers are unusual and interesting: “Ruby”, “Pearl”, “Almaz” and “Smaragd (Emerald)”. Each tower has six round and four lancet windows - loopholes.
On August 23, 1910, the fort ceased to be a military facility and was transferred to the management of the Imperial Railway, and 10 years later the bastions were completely dismantled and the ditches were filled in to make way for the railway tracks of the goods station and not to interfere with the construction of the railway bridge.
After the Great Patriotic War, the gates were badly damaged and were under threat of demolition, but in 1960 they still received the status of an Architectural Monument, but this did not save them from further destruction and neglect.
And now, quite recently, a bright period has finally arrived in the post-war history of the gate. The Museum of the World Ocean took the collapsing gate under its wing. Under the Federal Target Program “Culture”, more than 20 million rubles were allocated for restoration and giving the gates its original architectural image. The difficulty lies in the fact that to restore the gate, a special brick is required, purchased in Latvia, and the necessary shaped elements are cut out of it on site.
The director of the Azimut-Stroy LLC company, which carries out the restoration of the gate, Alexander Feshchenko, says that, in comparison with the Royal Gate, things here are much more complicated, since numerous elements require 46 types of different bricks.
Upon completion of all work, the gate will welcome long-awaited guests in the status of a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. It is planned that the museum areas will be dedicated to the history of shipbuilding, a center for the restoration of underwater archaeological finds will be opened, the area in front of the gate will be decorated with a beautiful fountain, and there are also plans to open a mini-cafe.
In conclusion of the story about the Friedrichsburg Gate, I want to point out another interesting historical fact. In 1697, Peter I visited the Friedrichsburg fortress in order to learn artillery skills.
Brandenburg Colonel von Sternfeld, who acted as a teacher, highly praised his student. Upon returning to Moscow, Peter I received a certificate that stated: “ Pyotr Mikhailov is recognized and revered as an accomplished bomb thrower, a careful and skillful firearms artist»
Having looked at the snow-covered gates for the last time, between the towers of which rays of the winter sun were visible, I headed further along the street. Portovaya and soon turned onto the street. Serpukhovskaya (formerly Knochen Straße), which in turn led me to the street. Bagration (formerly Alter Garten Straße).
The next gate on our route is located on this street - Brandenburg(German) Brandenburg Tor) is the only one of the seven surviving city gates of Königsberg that fulfill its purpose transport function and to this day.
The name of the gate comes from the order's Brandenburg Castle on the Frisching River, the ruins of which are still preserved in the modern village. Ushakovo, Bagrationovsky district. It was through these gates that the cobblestone road from Königsberg went towards Brandenburg Castle.
The date of construction is 1860. The author of the design of the facade of the Brandenburg Gate, as well as the Friedrichsburg Gate, is the talented military engineer Friedrich August Stüler. The gate became part of the Second Rampart fortification and served to allow pedestrians and vehicles through the earthen rampart at the Brandenburg Bastion.
This gate, made in the neo-Gothic style, is architecturally a little lighter in comparison with other city gates. On both sides of the two symmetrical arched openings for passage, there are small casemates with embrasures. Previously, these premises served for security and customs service, but now they house the famous Frames and Frames store in the city.
The walls of the casemates are made of clinker bricks; the base is lined with granite slabs using the quadra technique, and the facades are decorated with carved stone and small plastic.
Above the two arched arches, the gate is decorated with very beautiful “vimpergi” - Roman pediments with faceted turrets - “phials”.
The pediments along the edges are decorated with stylized sandstone flowers - “crabs”, and the finials - “crucifers”. The half-turrets are interconnected by crenellated parapets.
The “tympanums” (fields of pediments) are decorated on the city side with high reliefs, on the other side - with coats of arms. The author of sculpture is Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.
The high reliefs of the gate depict portraits of military generals, allies of Russia in the fight against Napoleonic France: military engineer Hermann von Boyen (left) and Lieutenant General Ernst Ludwig von Aster (right).
Hermann von Boyen was born in the city of Kreuzburg (the modern village of Enino, Bagrationovsky district) and is known for taking an active part in the wars with Napoleon, fighting in the battles of Leipzig, Lyon and Paris. With his participation, a system of military conscription was introduced in Prussia. On the site of his family estate there is still a forgotten and dilapidated monument to this outstanding man...
The second high relief belongs to Ernst Ludwig von Aster, also an active participant in the battles with Napoleonic France. However, his work on the fortification project for the Second Rampart fortification brought him the greatest fame.
During World War II, the Brandenburg Gate suffered relatively little damage. In the post-war period, they were used as a warehouse and were in general disrepair. And only in 1960, by a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, the Brandenburg Gate was declared a monument of urban planning and architecture of republican significance...
The bright but still cold February sun illuminated the ancient walls of the gate - silent witnesses rich history Koenigsberg. The skyward gables looked beautiful against the blue sky, probably the same as a century and a half ago, catching the eye of a casual passerby.
I wanted to look endlessly at the gates and the line of cars passing through them, but my path lay further - towards the South Station, where, a hundred meters from the gates, on a section of the ancient wall, there are memorial high reliefs informing us that here in the 19th century they were buried Professor - Rector of the Albertina University of Königsberg.
This is the philosopher Christian Jacob Kraus (1753-1807) (German: Christian Jacob Kraus), anatomist and physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776-1847) (German: Karl Friedrich Burdach), after whom the nerve bundle in the posterior columns of the spinal cord, which provides the sense of touch, is named and deep sensitivity of the lower extremities and lower parts of the body and philologist Ludvikas Reza (1776-1840) (German: Liudvikas Gediminas Rėza).
By the way, on the high relief of the famous Lithuanian poet there was an unforgivable mistake in the name (LudviGas instead of LudviKas), but let it be on the conscience of the author of this memorial sign. I’ll also add that in Kaliningrad in 2000, in the park of the Lithuanian sister cities at the intersection of the street. Chestnut Alley and Victory Ave., the monument to Ludvikas Reza by sculptor A. Sakalauskas was solemnly opened.
Meanwhile, I, passing beautiful building South Station, went out onto Kalinin Avenue and headed to the next gate on our route - Friedland. Also in the third part I will introduce you to another city gate of Königsberg - the Sackheim Gate.
To be continued...
This section will talk about one of the attractions of the Kaliningrad region - seven survivors and some information about the completely destroyed gates, which at one time served as the entrance to the city of Königsberg.
Sackheim Gate
Sackheim Gate (German: Sackheimer Tor) is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Moskovsky Prospekt and Litovsky Val.
The current Sackheim Gate building was built in the mid-19th century. However, the first gate on this site was built during the construction of the first rampart fortification of Königsberg at the beginning of the 17th century. Until the end of the 19th century, while rampart fortifications existed, the gate served as a checkpoint at the entrance to the city. After the ramparts were demolished, they lost their defensive function and became a kind of analogue triumphal arch. At the beginning of the 20th century, the gate was sold by the military department to the city. After this, part of the casemates was demolished and residential buildings were added to the gates.
After World War II, the gates began to be used as a warehouse, which was their function until 2006. Moreover, the gate has the status of a historical monument of federal significance.
In 2006, restoration of the gate began. After restoration, the gate will be transferred to the federal government institution “Center for Standardization and Metrology.” There will be laboratories and a small museum where you can see scales and other ancient measuring instruments.
Architecture
The Sackheim Gate has one passage in the form of an arch. In the past there were also smaller arches on the sides, which may have been pedestrian passages, but they have not survived to this day. At the corners of the gate there are four towers: two round on the city side and octagonal on the outside. On the city side, the gates were decorated with high reliefs of Johann David Ludwig York and Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, and on the outside with an image of a black eagle (the Order of the Black Eagle was the highest award of Prussia).
Royal Gate
Korolevskie Voromta is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovsky Val. In 2005, the Royal Gate was a symbol of the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad. Since the same year, the gate has been a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. They house an exhibition dedicated to the visit of the Grand Embassy of Peter I to Königsberg.
The gate is built in a pseudo-Gothic style and looks like a small castle.
German time
The current Royal Gate inherited its name from an older gate located on the same site. These first gates were originally called Gumbinnensky, since it was to Gumbinnen (now Gusev) that the road leading through them led. In 1811, the gate was renamed the Royal Gate, after the name of the street on which it was located (Koenigstrasse). The name of the street is due to the fact that Prussian kings followed it on their way from the Königsberg castle to military reviews in the suburb of Devau.
At the end of the first half of the 19th century, the modernization of city fortifications began in Königsberg. Then the old gates were demolished, and new ones were built in their place, which have survived to this day.
Royal Gate in the 19th century
The ceremonial laying of the new Royal Gate took place on August 30, 1843 in the presence of King Frederick William IV, and construction was completed in 1850.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the defensive structures, which included the Royal Gate, became obsolete, lost their military significance and were sold to the city by the military department. In 1910, the ramparts adjacent to the gate on the sides were torn down. Thus the gate became a free-standing, island structure. Now they served as a kind of triumphal arch.
It is not known whether the Royal Gate was used as a defensive structure during the assault on the city by Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War. At least they are not mentioned in the chronicles of military operations and in memoirs.
The gates were damaged by artillery and bombing, but this does not mean that they were a target, because the entire city was subject to shelling and bombing.
Soviet time
Nothing is known about the history of the gate between 1945 and 1960. The first official post-war document related to the Royal Gate is Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 1327 of August 30, 1960. This document established a list historical monuments cities taken under state protection.
However, the only consequence of this resolution was that the gates were decorated with a sign “The monument is registered and protected by the state.” No restoration or even conservation work was carried out then.
By that time there was no longer a through passage through the gate.
For another fifteen years nothing happened in the history of the gate. They were not restored, they were not written about. The gates gradually collapsed.
In 1975, the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the Office for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments received the following letter, signed by the chairman of the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee V.V. Denisov:
The Kaliningrad City Executive Committee reports that repair and conservation work on the “Royal Gate”, located on Frunze Street - Litovsky Val and which is an architectural monument of national importance, will be carried out in the coming years. In the future, this building will be adapted for the cultural needs of the city.
However, in reality, these good intentions did not cause any consequences. On the contrary, soon a new threat loomed over the gates:
“...We ask for your permission to demolish the following sculptures, high reliefs, bas-reliefs and medallions as being of neither historical nor national value: a) from the Royal Gate sculptural images of Frederick I, Duke Albrecht and Ottokar II, b) from the Brandenburg Gate medallions with images of generals Astaire and Boyen and the coat of arms of Prussia...".
The author of this letter, sent to the state inspection for the protection of historical and cultural monuments in 1976, was a person whose position was not to destroy, but to preserve cultural monuments, namely the head of the Department of Culture of the Kaliningrad Regional Executive Committee, V. K. Glushkov.
However, Moscow experts did not give the green light to “hewing” the gates.
That same year, for the first time since the end of the war, the gate began to be used: it housed a bookshop.
In subsequent years, attempts by local authorities to destroy the gate did not stop. In the issue of January 8, 1978, the newspaper “Kaliningradskaya Pravda” wrote that the gate should be demolished. It is unlikely that this article was an accident, since around the same time the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee sent an official request to the Ministry of Culture and the Central Council of the All-Union Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments to remove state protection from the Royal Gate.
Fortunately, this time too the initiative of the Kaliningrad authorities to destroy evidence of the city’s pre-war history did not meet with support in Moscow. The article from “Kaliningradka” caught the eye of the head of the Department for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR A. N. Kopylov, who sharply criticized the initiative.
In order to resolve the issue of the value of the Royal Gate, the Ministry of Culture sent a special commission to Kaliningrad. She worked in the city from September 10 to 16, 1978. As a result, the protective status of the gate was confirmed, and a letter was sent from the Ministry of Culture to Kaliningrad, which substantiated the historical and cultural significance gates, and a request to remove their status as a protected monument was refused.
By the beginning of perestroika, the bookstore at the gate ceased to exist. They again became an abandoned structure, which no one cared for, and which gradually collapsed. For some time the gate was used as a warehouse.
As noted above, by 1991 the gates were abandoned. Over the next ten years, this situation did not change, despite the fact that there were many options for their restoration and further use.
A turning point in the history of the gate was the celebration of the 750th anniversary of the city, which was celebrated in 2005. The Royal Gate was not only one of many objects restored for the anniversary, it was this building that became the main symbol of the anniversary.
The anniversary symbol was a silhouette of a gate against the background of the Russian flag with the inscriptions “Kaliningrad” and “750”.
In the fall of 2004, 20 million rubles were allocated from the federal budget for the restoration of the gate, but then the cost more than doubled, to 49 million rubles.
Restoration work began in November 2004. By this time, the condition of the gate left much to be desired, because it had been damaged during the war and stood without maintenance for almost sixty years. The bas-reliefs were damaged: Frederick I, Duke Albrecht and Ottokar II had their heads knocked off
The progress of the restoration of the gate was supervised at the highest level, since the organizing committee for preparing the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad was headed by Russian Minister of Economy German Gref. In February 2005, he announced that if the gate was not completely restored by July 3 (the last day of the anniversary celebrations), then a “Royal Gallows” would be installed next to it for the officials responsible for the restoration.
However, there was no need to resort to such drastic measures: the gates were ready on time. Their opening after restoration took place on July 1.
Restoring the bas-reliefs of the “three headless kings,” as they were called in Kaliningrad (although one of them, Albrecht, was not a king), presented particular difficulty. There was practically no documentation, and it was possible to judge what they looked like before the war only from photographs. It was extremely difficult to send the figures for restoration to Germany, where there is extensive experience in such work, due to Russian laws, which provide for a complex procedure for obtaining permission for the temporary export of cultural objects abroad. In this regard, it was decided to restore the figures on site.
To restore the figures, masters Aleksey Kadyrov and Sergey Bugaev, sculptor-restorers who had previously restored the Singing Chapel named after them, arrived in Kaliningrad from St. Petersburg. Glinka in St. Petersburg. Also, the leading restorer of the State Hermitage, Vyacheslav Mozgovoy, was invited to restore the bas-reliefs.
The difficulty of the restoration lay, among other things, in the fact that the figures were made of a special type of sandstone, and a special compound had to be created to strengthen the heads.
There were some oddities: when the heads were almost ready, detailed photographs of the figures were discovered in one of the Polish archives. The heads had to be remade. Now, in case the kings lose their heads again in the future for some reason, they can be replaced with spare ones.
On November 10, 2005, a message to descendants was embedded in the wall of the Royal Gate - a glass case with the book “City of My Dreams”, from which the Kaliningraders of the future will learn how the Kaliningraders of 2005 imagined their time. One of the entries in the book was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2, while he was attending anniversary celebrations.
The creation of a message to descendants was an initiative of the Museum of the World Ocean.
On February 10, 2005, the gates were transferred to the Museum of the World Ocean. There is an exhibition dedicated to the Great Embassy of Peter I to Europe.
Gate architecture
Like the rest of the gates of Königsberg, the Royal Gate was built in the neo-Gothic style, but it is in the Royal Gate that the style is most clearly expressed. The gate material is brick.
The Royal Gate consists of a single passage 4.5 meters wide, flanked by former casemates. On the city side, the casemates had windows and doors, and on the outside - embrasures. On the outside of the gate there was a so-called guardhouse - a courtyard with gunfire from all sides.
The vertical division of the gate consists of three equally wide parts, two lateral parts of the division contain casemates, while the middle one belongs to the passage. The horizontal division is indicated by a cornice belt that divides the gate into two tiers. The casemates are one tier high, the middle part of the gate (the part with the passage) rises above them to the height of another tier. There are crenellations on the edges of the roof of both the casemates and the central part. At the four corners of the high central part there is a tower. On the outer corners of the lower tier there are four similar towers, so the gate has eight towers. Now all eight towers look the same, but in the 19th century the towers of the lower tier were shaped like turrets - stylized watchtowers. Most likely, the towers of the lower tier acquired their current appearance when the gates were rebuilt after they were sold to the city.
The first tier of the gate is decorated with three portals, the second with three niches in which bas-reliefs of King Ottokar II of the Czech Republic (left), King Frederick I of Prussia (middle) and Duke of Prussia Albrecht I (right) are installed. Below the figures are their family coats of arms. Above the niches are the coats of arms of the Prussian lands - Samland and Natangia.
The front walls are two meters thick, the vaults are 1.25 m thick. Thus, the gate walls could withstand the shelling of the artillery of that time. The coverings of the tiers and the ceilings between the tiers are made in the form of a system of cross vaults. Since these vaults caused strong expansion, buttresses were built on the side faces of the gate.
During its existence, the architecture of the gate has undergone changes. Back in 1875, the northern casemate was converted into a passage for pedestrians, and later the same thing happened with the southern casemate. After the sale of the gate to the city, the guardhouse and some other elements necessary for the defensive structure, but unnecessary for the gate - the triumphal arch, were demolished. The end sides of the gate were rebuilt, which are visible after the shaft was razed.
Gates as a possible place to hide lost cultural values
During the war, cultural property stolen by German troops from museums, archives, libraries and churches of the Soviet Union was sent to Königsberg. In the spring of 1945, these valuables, along with valuables from Königsberg museums and other cultural institutions, were buried in various hiding places. Often such hiding places were located in fortifications.
There are versions that the valuables were hidden in the gates of Königsberg, including the Royal ones.
The expedition's search was mainly focused on the Rostgarten Gate, as there was other evidence that valuables were hidden there. Search for the most part We limited ourselves to a visual inspection of the premises. The expedition did not have its own instruments; they used instruments borrowed from the military engineering school. Although these devices were not intended for such use, the search engines had no choice.
Rossgarten Gate
Rossgarten Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Chernyakhovsky and Alexander Nevsky streets, next to Vasilevsky Square and the Amber Museum.
The current gate building is located on the site where the gate of the same name was located, which belonged to the first rampart fortification of the city (early 17th century).
The gate building that has survived to this day was built in 1852-1855 according to the design of Engineer Hauptmann and director of fortress construction Irfugelbrecht and Lieutenant Engineer von Heil in Königsberg. The design of the gate facade was developed by the secret supreme building councilor August Stüler, head of the Technical Construction Deputation in Berlin. The author of the sculptural decorations is Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer.
The first gate project was developed in 1852 by the department of fortresses in Königsberg. This project was significantly revised by Privy Councilor Stüler. Stüler himself worked out the design of the façade, giving it distinct Gothic forms.
After the war, the gate was restored and began to be used as the cafe-restaurant “Sunny Stone”.
Architecture
The gate has only one passage four meters wide. There are three casemates on both sides of the passage. Thus, the façade of the gate consists of seven openings. On the city side, the casemates have windows, on the outside - embrasures.
Above the façade of the gate there is a row of battlements, divided into two halves by a raised central part. On the sides, the central part is framed by two high octagonal turrets, which end with decorative machicolations. Between the turrets there is a high arch, which precedes the actual entrance to the gate. Above the arch there is an observation platform fenced with battlements. To the right and left of the arch are arcades consisting of arches supported by columns.
On the sides of the main arch there are two medallions-portraits depicting the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
While the city side of the gate is beautifully decorated, the outer side is undecorated. From the outside, the passage is covered by a blockhouse, from which all-round rifle and artillery fire could be conducted, and a guardhouse, from the embrasures of which frontal and flank fire could be conducted. The guardhouse had swing gates. In front of the guardhouse there was a ditch, over which a drawbridge was thrown.
Ausfal Gate
Ausfal Gate (also: exit gate, from German Ausfalstor, gate for sorties) is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located on the southwestern corner of the intersection of Gvardeisky Prospekt and Gornaya Street, in close proximity to the monument to the 1200 Guardsmen.
Of all the surviving gates, the Ausfal gates were rebuilt to the greatest extent.
The first gate, approximately on the site of the current one, was built in the twenties of the XVII century, during the construction of a defensive rampart around the city. Later, in 1866, the gate was rebuilt in the brick Gothic style. Built in the 19th century, the Ausfal Gate allowed only pedestrians through, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by its poorer architectural design). The new Ausphallian Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster.
The gate cut into the shaft from the very beginning and was actually below ground level. In the 20th century, the only gate passage was blocked. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold by the military department to the city.
During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a command post for military units. Extensive interior spaces The gates were divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed with hermetically sealed security doors.
After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for the nearby police school, and later as a sewage collector.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located level with the level of the roadway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died during the storming of Koenigsberg.
In the spring of 2007, the Ausfal and Railway Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates and place museum exhibitions in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.
Architecture
The Ausfal Gate has only one passage, to which a staircase and a rather narrow bridge led from the outside (traces of which are still preserved), which confirms that the gate only allowed pedestrians through. On the sides of the passage there are casemates with embrasures for frontal and flanking fire. The passage is blocked in an arc with a bow arch, which is decorated with a platband with teeth. The side outer walls of the gate opening into the moat are lined with granite slabs, decorated with rustication in the quadra type.
Above the passage there is a combat platform with a crenellated parapet.
Nothing is known about the appearance of the internal (facing the city) façade of the gate, since it was covered with earth, and no photographs or drawings of it have survived.
Railway gates (Kaliningrad)
The railway gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. The gate is located under the roadway of Gvardeysky Prospekt, next to the monument to 1200 guardsmen. A pedestrian path passes through the gate leading to the park located behind the monument.
There is an inscription on the gate with the date of its construction - 1866-1869. It is located on the keystone of the gate. The Railway Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster (he is also the author of the Ausfal Gate project).
The railway leading to Pillau (now Baltiysk) passed through these gates. After the defensive structures of the city center were removed, the Deutschordenring street (now Gvardeysky Avenue) was laid along the former rampart. Thus, since then the gate has been inconspicuous, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.
After World War II, traffic on the railway passing through the gate ceased as a new railway line was built. Nevertheless, the rails from the old road were preserved until the end of the nineties.
Later, a pedestrian path was laid along the route of the former railway, which leads from Moskovsky Prospekt through the Zheleznodorodnye Gate to the park behind the monument to 1200 guardsmen.
In the spring of 2007, the Zheleznodorozhny and Ausfal Gates were transferred to the Kaliningrad Historical and Art Museum. It is planned to restore the gates and place museum exhibitions on military-historical topics in their premises. Together with the monument to 1200 guardsmen and Victory Park, the gate should become part of the military-historical complex.
Architecture
The railway gates have two spans, decorated with pointed arches. The gate portals are decorated with figured bricks. On the sides of the arches there are casemates with embrasures. On the outside of the gate there is a guardhouse with powerful embrasures.
The gate ends with parapets with a forged lattice, which protect Gvardeysky Avenue passing through the gate.
A special feature of the gates are the so-called fines. They are vertical double arms of square section, arranged in the walls of the arches. In case of defense, strong beams should have been laid from them. The barrier thus formed resembled blinds. It was impossible to disassemble the fines from the outside.
Other railway gates in Königsberg
There were other railway gates in Königsberg. The first ones were built after 1853 and were located next to the Brandenburg Gate. The railway leading to Berlin passed through these gates. There were several other railway gates. All of them were demolished by the twenties.
Brandenburg Gate (Kaliningrad)
The Brandenburg (Berlin) Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located on Bagration Street. The Brandenburg Gate is the only city gate in Kaliningrad that is still used for its intended purpose.
The Brandenburg Gate was built in Königsberg in 1657 on the southwestern section of the First Rampart fortification at its intersection with the road leading to Brandenburg Castle (now the village of Ushakovo). Due to lack Money and the corresponding project, the organizers limited themselves to the construction of wooden gates placed under the roof and resting on an earthen rampart. To provide reliable cover, a ditch was dug in front and filled with water.
A hundred years later, by order of the Prussian King Frederick II, the dilapidated building was demolished, and in its place a massive brick building with two spacious passages with a pointed end was built. New strong gates completely blocked the road to the south (now Suvorov Street) and served as reliable protection for the city. Thick walls well covered a small garrison of guards, who were housed in internal casemates. There were also service, utility, storage rooms and lifts. During restoration work in 1843, the gate was significantly rebuilt (almost rebuilt on the same site) and decorated with pointed decorative pediments, cruciform sandstone flowers, stylized leaves on the finials, coats of arms and medallions. Installed on the gate sculptural portraits Field Marshal Boyen (1771-1848), Minister of War, participant in reforms in the Prussian army; on the right - Lieutenant General Ernst von Aster (1778-1855), chief of the engineering corps, one of the authors of the Second Rampart fortification.
The Brandenburg Gate is the only Königsberg gate that has survived to this day, fulfilling its former transport function. The building has been restored and is protected by the state as an architectural monument decorating Bagration Street in Kaliningrad.
Architecture
The gate has two passages. Although all the gates built in the mid-19th century in Königsberg belonged to the neo-Gothic style, in the Brandenburg Gate the Gothic motifs are especially pronounced. The arrow-shaped pediments stand out, giving the essentially low building a sense of height. The gates are richly decorated with decorative elements - for example, high reliefs and stylized stone flowers.
Friedland Gate
Friedland Gate is one of the seven surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. Located at the intersection of Kalinin Avenue and Dzerzhinsky Street, adjacent to Yuzhny Park ( former park 40th anniversary of the Komsomol). There is a museum inside the gate.
The name of the gate is associated with the city of Friedland, present-day Pravdinsk. The first Friedland Gate was built in the 17th century, but it was not located in the current location.
The now preserved Friedland Gate became the last gate of Königsberg (that is, it was the last to be built). The exact date of their construction is unknown, the approximate dates are 1857-1862. It is also unknown who their architect was. At the beginning of the 20th century, the outdated gate, which had lost its military significance, along with the entire second shaft contour, was sold by the War Ministry to the city. Then traffic through them was stopped, since part of the defensive rampart that had become unnecessary was torn down, and the road to Friedland (current Dzerzhinsky Street) began to pass on the side of the gate.
After the war, the gate was empty for a long time, then it housed a warehouse. In the late 1980s, work was carried out in South Park to clear the area and clean the bottom of the park's many ponds. During these works, many old objects were found. Soon a museum was organized at the gate, the basis of the collection of which was the objects found in the park.
Architecture
Like all the gates of Königsberg, the Friedland Gate was built in the neo-Gothic style. The name of the author of the project is unknown, sometimes authorship is attributed to Stüler.
The façade of the gate on the city side is divided into six parts by five buttresses. The buttresses are crowned with pointed, gable, decorative turrets that project above a decorative crenellated parapet. All external gate openings (passages, windows, doors) are made in the form of pointed arches and decorated with perspective portals.
The two central parts of the gate are occupied by driveways. The dimensions of the passages are 4.39 m wide and 4.24 m high. The parts along the edges are occupied by casemates.
The surface of the gate façade is decorated as if with a grid, which is a rhombic pattern. The “threads” of this mesh are made of bricks of a different color.
The facade of the gate was decorated with a statue of the great commander Friedrich von Zollern, which was not preserved (disappeared after the war). Another statue, depicting Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, is located on the outside of the gate. This statue has been preserved, but its head has been broken off. There is a guardhouse on the outside of the gate.
The museum at the Friedland Gate was founded by Alexander Georgievich Novik (1956-2001). Initially, the museum was actually private and had no official status. Only in 2002 the museum was officially created by order of the director South Park. The museum formally opened on October 22, 2002.
The basis of the museum's exhibition are objects found during the cleanup of the park and its reservoirs. In the museum you can see antique bottles, dishes, household items, cart and carriage wheels, etc. Another exhibition tells about the fortifications of Königsberg.
In 2007, the museum took second place in the fourth All-Russian competition “Changing Museum in a Changing World.” Four hundred museums took part in this competition; the Friedland Gate was second only to the Tretyakov Gallery. The prize money will be used to modernize the museum.
Unpreserved city gates of Kaliningrad
In addition to the seven city gates that have survived to this day, there were other gates in Königsberg that are now lost.
Tragheim Gate
The Tragheim Gate was located in the area of what is now Victory Square. They were demolished in 1910, after the defensive structures of the second circuit became outdated, lost their defensive significance and were sold to the city by the military department.
Steindamm Gate
Just like the Tragheim gate, these gates were located in the area of the current Victory Square. They were demolished in 1912.
Hollanderbaumskie
These gates were located at the intersection of the current General Butkov Street and Marshal Bagryamyan Embankment, next to the two-tier bridge over the Pregolya. The gate was named after the area in which it was located (Hollenderbaum, "Dutch tree"). Nearby there was a railway station with the same name. The gate was demolished at the beginning of the 20th century.
Now it’s time to explain why gates are mentioned in the title of the post.
In 1626 - 1634, a rampart fortification was erected, which surrounded Königsberg on all sides. The fortification consisted of several bastions and half-bastions, as well as 9 gates. In addition, on the sea side, in 1657, the powerful fort of Friedrichsburg was founded.
And two centuries later, King Frederick William IV issues a decree on the beginning of the construction of the Second Rampart fortification, which generally follows the contours of the previous one. The powerful Don and Wrangel towers, the defensive barracks Kronprinz and the Astronomical Bastion are being built, and new fortified gates are being erected on the site of the previous ones. The construction of the Royal Gate was the first to begin in 1843, and construction was completed with the construction of the Friedland Gate in 1862.
We didn’t manage to visit all the gates: (But I’ll still show you some of them:)
Brandenburg Gate
There is a memorial plaque on the wall.
And here are the gates themselves. The tram line runs through them.
The Brandenburg Gate was built around 1860. The facade was designed by architect August Stüler. On the side facing the city, two portrait medallions of the sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stümler have been preserved: on the left is the military engineer Field Marshal Hermann von Boyen, on the left is General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, a participant in the Napoleonic wars and the author of the second rampart fortification of the Königsberg fortress. The name of the gate can be interpreted in two ways: first, through it there is a road to the Order Castle Brandenburg (now the village of Ushakovo); second, the same road leads to the German state of Brandenburg. But they have nothing in common with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
which one is a field marshal and which one is a general, I'm confused)) 
This is a view of the gate from the other side. By the way, pay attention to the tram line - it is a narrow-gauge railway. And the trams are quite normal in size. According to my feelings, they shake on the way twice as much as in Moscow ones :)
A little history of the Königsberg tram. In the 19th century, due to the growth of the city, there was a need for public transport. In May 1881, the first horse-drawn tram route was opened in Königsberg (in the same year, an electric tram was already launched in Berlin). The horsecar owners were joint-stock companies. Compared to droshky rides, the cost of a horse-drawn ride was much more affordable: from 10 to 20 pfennigs (depending on the distance) versus 60 pfennigs for one passenger, 70 pfennigs for two, 80 for three and marks for four passengers on a droshky.
And in May 1895, the first trams appeared on the streets of Königsberg. In 1901, the city bought all the horse-drawn lines (with the exception of the lines in Hufen) and began electrifying them.
The strange structure ahead is a bridge.
The next gate is Friedrichsburg. 
The Friedrichsburg Gate is the only historical gate in Kaliningrad that led not to the city of Königsberg, but to the fortress of the same name. In 1657, at the direction of the Great Elector Frederick William, south coast Friedrichsburg fortress was built on the Pregolya River. It was built according to the design of Christian Otter and was topographically shaped like a square. At its corners there were four bastions with euphonious names - Ruby, Emerald, Diamond and Pearl. In the quadrangular courtyard, surrounded by earthen ramparts, there were various buildings: the commandant's office, barracks, prison house, barns, guardhouse, prison and church.
During the stay of the Great Russian Embassy in Königsberg in 1697 under the name of Sergeant Peter Mikhailov, Russian Tsar Peter I underwent artillery training in the Friedrichsburg and Pillaus fortresses. The training was conducted by Brandenburg specialist in this field, Colonel von Sternfeld. He noted the abilities of his 25-year-old student. Upon his return to Moscow, Peter I received a certificate that said: “Peter Mikhailov is to be recognized and revered as an accomplished bomb-thrower, a careful and skillful firearms artist.”
In the middle of the 19th century, during the construction of new rampart fortifications around Königsberg, the Friedrichsburg fortress was rebuilt into a fort of the same name. In 1852, a brick gate was erected at Fort Friedrichsburg. The author of the design of these gates was August Stüler, the court architect of the Prussian king Frederick William IV. On August 23, 1910, Fort Friedrichsburg was excluded from the defensive fortifications of Königsberg and sold to the Imperial Railway. The ramparts were torn down and the ditches of Fort Friedrichsburg were filled in. The main part of its structures has been dismantled. Railroad tracks were laid across the territory previously occupied by this fort. From the fort's buildings, only the gate and the barracks on the eastern side have survived. defensive wall southeastern bastion.
Now the Friedrichsburg Gate has been transferred to the Museum of the World Ocean.
Some tiny hatches))
Bridge. This strange design is a spreading mechanism, or rather a lifting one :) The new railway bridge was built in 1926. Its design was rotary, the upper part of the bridge was intended for trains, the lower for pedestrians and cars. The turning part was 57 meters long and weighed 1225 tons, and the bridge could be turned within 2-3 minutes. It was blown up during the retreat of German troops and restored in 1949. The design of the bridge was changed to a drawbridge. The height of the bridge is about 50 meters.
The bridge is in such a... neglected and picturesque state. My friends were even afraid to cross it on the rusty metal. And I remembered my home and the stairs on the Embankment)) 
The views from the bridge are great! 
Maybe the piles of some old bridge?
The Cathedral is visible in the distance.
The cat somehow looks unkindly at the guests of the city :)
"Rock garden" in one of the courtyards :)
What pleases me most here is the pink “toy” house)
The building on the right is also very interesting. 
This is the YuI MIA - a police university. The building was built approx. 1931, during German times the labor exchange was located here.
Railway gate 
1866-1869 The Railway Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster.
The railway leading to Pillau (now Baltiysk) passed through these gates. After the defenses of the city center were removed, a street was built along the former rampart. Thus, since then the gate has been inconspicuous, and rather resembles a tunnel through a road embankment.
There is an unexpected sign on the gate)))
Behind the gates beautiful park with ponds. 
And this is the Ausfal Gate.
The first gate, approximately on the site of the current one, was built in the twenties of the XVII century, during the construction of a defensive rampart around the city. Later, in 1866, the gate was rebuilt in the brick Gothic style. Built in the 19th century, the Ausfal Gate allowed only pedestrians through, and was less significant in relation to the rest of the city gates (as evidenced, for example, by its poorer architectural design). The new Ausphallian Gate was designed by the architect Ludwig von Aster.
From the very beginning, the gate crashed into the shaft and was actually below ground level. In the 20th century, the only gate passage was blocked. Like all other city gates, in 1910 the Ausfal Gate was sold by the military department to the city.
During the war, the Ausfal Gate was converted into a command post for military units. The vast interior of the gate was divided into separate compartments by concrete walls. The passages between the compartments were closed with hermetically sealed security doors.
After the war, the gate was used as a warehouse, later as a bomb shelter for the nearby police school, and later as a sewage collector.
In 1993, on the upper covering of the gate, which is located level with the level of the roadway of Gvardeisky Prospekt, the Orthodox chapel of St. George was built, dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died during the storming of Koenigsberg.