Albert Speer's Volkshalle (“People's Hall”) - scale model in Berlinsche Galerie
To give an idea of scale, the Brandenburg Gate is beside it!
From wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkshalle)
The Volkshalle (“People's Hall”), also called Große Halle (“Great Hall”) or Ruhmeshalle (“Hall of Glory”), was a huge domed monumental building planned by Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer for Germania. The project was never accomplished.
This truly enormous building was, according to Albert Speer, inspired by Hadrian's Pantheon, which Hitler visited privately on May 7, 1938. But Hitler's interest in and admiration for the Pantheon predated this visit, since his sketch of the Volkshalle dates from about 1925. Hermann Giesler records a conversation he had with Hitler in the winter of 1939/40, when Hitler was recalling his “Roman Impressions” (Römische Impressionen):
From the time I experienced this building – no description, picture or photograph did it justice – I became interested in its history […] For a short while I stood in this space (the rotunda) – what majesty! I gazed at the large open oculus and saw the universe and sensed what had given this space the name Pantheon – God and the world are one.
Hitler's impressions of the Roman Pantheon were revived when on June 24, 1940 he made a tour of selected buildings in Paris, with the German architects Albert Speer, Hermann Giesler and Arno Breker, including the Paris Panthéon, which seems to have disappointed him. His disappointment is independently recorded by Giesler and Breker.
The sketch of the Volkshalle given by Hitler to Speer shows a traditional gabled pronaos supported by ten columns, a shallow rectangular intermediate block and behind it the domed main building. Giesler notes that the pronaos of the temple in Hitler's sketch is reminiscent of Hadrian's Pantheon and of the style of Friedrich Gilly or Karl Friedrich Schinkel. However, there was little about Speer's elaboration of the sketch that might be termed Doric, except perhaps for the triglyphs in the entablature, supported by the geminated red granite columns with their Egyptian palm-leaf capitals, previously employed by Speer in the portico outside Hitler's study on the garden side of the new Chancellery.
Speer's Monster-Building (German: Monsterbau) was to be the capital's most important and impressive building in terms of its size and symbolism. Visually it was to have been the architectural centrepiece of Berlin as the world capital (Welthauptstadt). Its dimensions were so large that it would have dwarfed every other structure in Berlin, including those on the north-south axis itself. The oculus of the building's dome, 46 metres (151 ft) in diameter, would have accommodated the entire rotunda of Hadrian's Pantheon and the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. The dome of the Volkshalle was to rise from a massive granite podium 315 by 315 metres (1,033 × 1,033 ft) and 74 metres (243 ft) high, to a total inclusive height of 290 metres (950 ft). The diameter of the dome, 250 metres (820 ft), was to be exceeded, much to Speer's annoyance, by the diameter of Giesler's new domed railway station at the east end of Munich's east-west axis. It was to be 15 metres (49 ft) greater in diameter than Speer's Volkshalle
Albert Speer's Volkshalle (“People's Hall”) - scale model in Berlinsche Galerie
To give an idea of scale, the Brandenburg Gate is beside it!
From wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkshalle)
The Volkshalle (“People's Hall”), also called Große Halle (“Great Hall”) or Ruhmeshalle (“Hall of Glory”), was a huge domed monumental building planned by Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer for Germania. The project was never accomplished.
This truly enormous building was, according to Albert Speer, inspired by Hadrian's Pantheon, which Hitler visited privately on May 7, 1938. But Hitler's interest in and admiration for the Pantheon predated this visit, since his sketch of the Volkshalle dates from about 1925. Hermann Giesler records a conversation he had with Hitler in the winter of 1939/40, when Hitler was recalling his “Roman Impressions” (Römische Impressionen):
From the time I experienced this building – no description, picture or photograph did it justice – I became interested in its history […] For a short while I stood in this space (the rotunda) – what majesty! I gazed at the large open oculus and saw the universe and sensed what had given this space the name Pantheon – God and the world are one.
Hitler's impressions of the Roman Pantheon were revived when on June 24, 1940 he made a tour of selected buildings in Paris, with the German architects Albert Speer, Hermann Giesler and Arno Breker, including the Paris Panthéon, which seems to have disappointed him. His disappointment is independently recorded by Giesler and Breker.
The sketch of the Volkshalle given by Hitler to Speer shows a traditional gabled pronaos supported by ten columns, a shallow rectangular intermediate block and behind it the domed main building. Giesler notes that the pronaos of the temple in Hitler's sketch is reminiscent of Hadrian's Pantheon and of the style of Friedrich Gilly or Karl Friedrich Schinkel. However, there was little about Speer's elaboration of the sketch that might be termed Doric, except perhaps for the triglyphs in the entablature, supported by the geminated red granite columns with their Egyptian palm-leaf capitals, previously employed by Speer in the portico outside Hitler's study on the garden side of the new Chancellery.
Speer's Monster-Building (German: Monsterbau) was to be the capital's most important and impressive building in terms of its size and symbolism. Visually it was to have been the architectural centrepiece of Berlin as the world capital (Welthauptstadt). Its dimensions were so large that it would have dwarfed every other structure in Berlin, including those on the north-south axis itself. The oculus of the building's dome, 46 metres (151 ft) in diameter, would have accommodated the entire rotunda of Hadrian's Pantheon and the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. The dome of the Volkshalle was to rise from a massive granite podium 315 by 315 metres (1,033 × 1,033 ft) and 74 metres (243 ft) high, to a total inclusive height of 290 metres (950 ft). The diameter of the dome, 250 metres (820 ft), was to be exceeded, much to Speer's annoyance, by the diameter of Giesler's new domed railway station at the east end of Munich's east-west axis. It was to be 15 metres (49 ft) greater in diameter than Speer's Volkshalle