The Brandenburger Tor(The Brandenburg Gate) is one of the world &apost;s most famous monuments. The most famous gate of Berlin was from 1961 to 1985 the symbol of the division of the country. On August 13, 1961 construction work on the Berlin Wall began. Precisely around that monument were  the reopening of the borders between the two Germanies  and gargantuan celebrations in 1989 when the two Germanies were united.  It was also the site of many other events in German history. It was where Prussian troops celebrated their great victories of 1815 and 1871. Nazi storm troopers held torch-lit marches there to celebrate Hitler's assumption of power in 1933. Created in the  17th century at the beginning of the reign of Frederick William , period of reconstruction, during which Friedrich II made Prussia into a European power and laid the foundation for flourishing trade and crafts. The gate thus is also a memorial for the king who died a few years before its construction. The gate is crowned with a quadriga ,a huge bronze group of the goddess  Nike on her chariot, "who brings peace" , marching into the city.   In 1806 Napoleon marched triumphantly into Berlin and carried the Quadriga away with him to Paris as a war booty. On its return, in 1814, Karl Friedrich Schinkel transformed Nike into a personification of German Victory, bearing the new military decoration, the iron cross, changing the figure"s interpretation from a courier of peace into a goddess of victory and wearing a wreath with the Prussian eagle. These attributes were removed when the Quadriga was recast in the 1950s, but reinstated during repair work carried out following damage sustained in the 1989 celebrations.