Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) occupies the ground where the SS Reich Security Main Office and the Gestapo had their headquarters during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. Spread across outdoor grounds and an indoor building on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the museum documents the history of repression under the Nazis.

The headquarters buildings were largely destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945, and their ruins were demolished after the war. In the 1980s, excavations uncovered the cellar of the Gestapo headquarters, where many political prisoners were tortured and executed. The first exhibitions on the site opened in 1987. Along the street runs a surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, the longest remaining segment of the outer wall that faced West Berlin.

The present Documentation Centre was designed by architect Ursula Wilms with landscape architect Heinz W. Hallmann. It opened in May 2010, on the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, together with the redesigned historic grounds.