Cold War Berlin · Unter den Linden 55–65 · Built 1949–1951
Moscow built over a public street to get 169 metres of Unter den Linden
To make one front for its new embassy, the Soviet Union took in the neighbouring plots, the Hotel Bristol among them, and built across the Kleine Mauerstraße, a public street that stopped existing. Measured on the ground today, no embassy on the boulevard covers more: 5,620 m².
The block south of Unter den Linden
Ground plans and streets: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. One scale throughout each view. One scale per view.
Russia has held this plot since 1837
Russia has held this plot for longer than Germany has existed. The palace that stood here was bought by Nicholas I in 1837 and burned in an air raid in February 1944; the number on its door changed in 1937, when the boulevard was renumbered and No. 7 became No. 63.
Then Moscow took the neighbours, and a public street
To build its new embassy, the Soviet Union took in the adjoining plots, among them the Hotel Bristol, and built over the Kleine Mauerstraße. Berlin's monument register records it plainly:mit der Überbauung der Kleinen Mauerstraße
, "by building over the Kleine Mauerstraße". The street stopped existing.
The embassy rose across it, 1949–1951
The Landesdenkmalamt dates the building 1949–1951. Its shell was already standing when the GDR was founded on 7 October 1949, and it was inaugurated on 7 November 1952, on the anniversary of the October Revolution. The listed building alone covers 5,620 m² of ground; with the flats, the school, the trade mission and the Aeroflot office behind it, the compound covers 9,421 m².
One front, 169 metres long
Measured along the line of the boulevard, the listed building stands across 169 m of Unter den Linden. The German Wikipedia gives about 185 m for the whole complex, a figure that takes in the boundary wall and the railings either side of the forecourt.
Nine landmarks, one boulevard
Here is the embassy among eight of its neighbours, from the American and French embassies on Pariser Platz to the Zeughaus, each where it stands and all at the same scale. The survey measured every one of them from the same OpenStreetMap data, read on 11 September 2026.
No landmark on the boulevard has a longer front
Lined up by the length of boulevard each one stands across, the embassy comes first with 169 m, ahead of the Humboldt-Universität at 150 m and the French Embassy at 116 m. The Neue Wache stands across 25 m: the embassy's front is 6.8 times as long.
Three older buildings cover more ground. No embassy does
By the ground it covers, the embassy ranks fourth: the Staatsbibliothek (13,501 m²), the Humboldt-Universität (10,226 m²), the Zeughaus (8,226 m²) are bigger. The other embassies come nowhere near: French 4,296 m², US 3,680 m², Polish 2,449 m². These are footprints, the ground under each building, not floor areas.
The nine compared
The landmarks of the boulevard, as they stand
Every building measured above, with the length of Unter den Linden it stands across and the ground it covers, from the same OpenStreetMap survey.
What the monument listing says
Berlin lists it as the opening shot of socialist realism in East Germany
The design was by Anatoli Jakowlewitsch Stryshewski and the design collective Lebedinskij, Sichert, F. Skujin; the client was the government of the Soviet Union. Berlin's monument register describes it in eight terms. Two are rules the boulevard imposed on every house along it; six are what the embassy did instead.
Manifest und Auftakt der Architektur des „sozialistischen Realismus“ in der DDR.
"Manifesto and overture of the architecture of 'socialist realism' in the GDR." Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, monument no. 09075006
- Baufluchtthe building line the boulevard's statute fixed. The embassy takes it from its neighbours, then breaks it with the courtyard.
- Traufhöhethe eaves height the same statute fixed, taken up from the neighbours and broken by the raised centre.
- Ehrenhofthe courtyard of honour, cut back from the street.
- Turmartig erhöhter Mittelteilthe tower-like raised centre, the one part that climbs above the line.
- Quadratische Laternethe square lantern that crowns it.
- Kolossalordnung mit kannelierten Halbsäulenone order of fluted half-columns running the full height of the front.
- Rustikaquaderung, Bänderung der Eckenrusticated blockwork, with the corners banded.
- Hammer und Sichel im Relieffries über dem Hauptportalhammer and sickle, carved into the relief frieze over the main door.
9–10 November 1989
The night the Wall opened, the Soviet embassy was asleep
The Soviet Union's command over East Germany ran through this address, and on the night the Wall opened it was not used. Ambassador Wjatscheslaw Kotschemassow had gone to bed. Moscow learned that the border was open from the news; the embassy, like the Kremlin, had not been told. The ambassador reached Egon Krenz by telephone the following morning.
- Evening, 9 November 1989Günter Schabowski announces the new travel rules. Neither the Kremlin nor the Soviet embassy in East Berlin has been told.
- The nightThe border opens. Moscow learns of it from the news; the ambassador is asleep.
- Before 08:00, 10 NovemberWassili Swirin, who runs the GDR desk at the Soviet foreign ministry, telephones the embassy's first counsellor Igor Maximytschew: “Was ist bei euch eigentlich los? Alle Presseagenturen der Welt sind wie von Sinnen. Sie behaupten, die Mauer sei weg!”
- Morning, 10 NovemberKotschemassow reaches Egon Krenz by telephone and tells him he is worried about the situation in Berlin.
The Soviet embassy is not the biggest building on Unter den Linden. It has the longest front of all the boulevard's landmarks, 169 metres, and a Berlin street disappeared beneath it.
