St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale Berlin

St. Hedwig’s Cathedral Berlin is a Roman Catholic cathedral in central Berlin, built in the eighteenth century and shaped by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff after Rome’s Pantheon. Its circular form and ribbed dome give the Baroque exterior a clear architectural identity, while wheelchair access makes the site easier to experience.

Frederick the Great donated the land after local parishioners requested a Catholic church, which became the first such church built in Prussia after the Reformation. Severe wartime damage left only the shell, and reconstruction produced a modernist interior by 1963, with Gothic sculptures, three tapestries on themes from Revelation, and a gilded, enamelled ivory altar cross.

The crypt holds Bernhard Lichtenberg, who prayed publicly for Jews during the 1938 pogroms before dying on the way to Dachau. A hemispherical altar uses small stones gathered by parishioners across the diocese, following an idea by Austrian artist Leo Zogmayer.