The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin has seen its share of history. It was built in the last decade of the 18th century. Twenty years later it saw the downfall of Napoleon. The French troops had taken the Quadriga (the four horses and the carriage on top) to Paris and General Blücher found it in Paris and brought it back to its original place.
After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 it saw the victory parade and until the end of the first World War only the Prussian Emperor and his immediate family as well as honoured guests were allowed to use the middle passage.
The Nazis celebrated their seizure of control over the German state with a massive torchlight possession through its arches. The gate then was quite heavily damaged during the fights in Berlin at the end of World War II.
On 17 June 1953 it was one of the sites of the uprising in East Germany. From 1961 to 1989 it couldn’t be crossed at all because it stood on the border between the two German states.
Today it is almost a casual place.
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pictures imperfect blog 
I would walk through the centre all the time
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No one would stop you. 😀
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A very historic site, indeed.
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Prisoners exchanged there or in the middle
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Not quite, Andrew. I think that would have been too conspicuous. Exchanges were amongst other places done at Checkpoint Charlie which has been made famous by John le Carré and other novelists. There were three checkpoints in Berlin between the American and the Soviet sectors (the other two were called Alpha and Bravo), neither of them near the Brandenburg Gate.
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John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. Bill Fairclough’s spy novel Beyond Enkription was described as ”up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby”. David Cornwell almost wrote both thrillers. See the brief and intriguing News Article dated 31 October 2022 about Pemberton’s People in MI6 in TheBurlingtonFiles website for more about how John le Carré may have had more Achilles heels than toes!
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