At the heart of Treptower Park, the gargantuan Soviet War Memorial (1949) looms above the graves of 5000 Soviet soldiers killed in the Battle of Berlin, a bombastic but sobering testament to the immensity of the country’s wartime losses. To reach the memorial from the S-Bahn station, head southeast for 750m on Puschkinallee, then enter the park through the stone gate and walk past the statue of Mother Russia grieving for her dead children.
Beyond here, flanking the gateway, two mighty walls are fronted by soldiers kneeling in sorrow; the red marble used here was supposedly scavenged from Hitler’s ruined chancellery. This gives way to a massive sunken lawn lined by sarcophagi representing the then 16 Soviet republics, each decorated with war scenes and Stalin quotes. The epic dramaturgy reaches a crescendo at the mausoleum, topped by a 13m statue of a Russian soldier clutching a child, his sword resting melodramatically on a shattered swastika. The socialist-realism mosaic inside the plinth shows grateful Soviets honouring the fallen.