Heavy Load-Bearing Body — Attraction in Berlin

Construction of such a gigantic structure presented numerous problems, the biggest one being that Berlin was founded on a swamp. In order to estimate the ability of its soft underlying soil to sustain the weight of their planned dome, the Nazis decided to conduct an experiment. In 1941, they built a huge concrete cylinder, 18 meters high and weighing about 12,650 metric tons. If this “Schwerbelastungskörper” (German for “heavy loading body”) sunk less then 6 centimeters, the soil would be deemed solid enough to sustain the dome. In fact, the cylinder sank over 18 centimeters in three years.

Never one to let empirical evidence stand in his way, Hitler decided to disregard the results and build the enormous Volkshalle anyway. But weight wouldn’t have been the only problem with the dome. It is believed that the hall’s acoustics would have made communication within it almost impossible, and that the building would have had its own “weather,” including indoor rain. In the end, Hitler’s defeat prevented this doomed project from even being started.

The enormous cylinder stood too close to several blocks of apartments to safely demolish after the war. So the Schwerbelastungskörper stood where it was. Since 1995, it has been protected as a...

Though it's not a typical tourist spot, it's worth visiting for travelers who seek some unique, historic spots to see shortly. This place will interest you if you like some architecture and war history. The place doesn't always seem open to the public, so I recommend checking the information before. I couldn't get in, and I could only read the introduction and take a photo of a part of the structure. It seems it's free of charge to visit...

While this may not look like much, it's one of these things that make you think, and that's always great. This was part of Hitler's grand plan of transforming Berlin into something else, and was meant to be temporary. Being as massive as it is, it was hard to remove, and now serves as one of the many reminders of that time in history when leaders planned mostly for their own glory, and not for the sake of the...