Correct: one also needs some butter and a glass of wine.

A close-up of the detailed stonework at the top.

We’re back … and we have lots of strange and wonderful doors for the coming year.

An arch of leaves.

Time to cleanse the palate with some post-war modernism. That diagonal bar – which appears on numerous mid-century Berlin doors – is an unheralded design classic.

Two inscriptions flanking yesterday’s door. No. 2: Additional information.

Two inscriptions flanking yesterday’s door. No. 1: Essential information.

The battle between modernity and monumentality (1925).

The door that goes with yesterday’s devil.

The devil in the details.

Egg and Dart detail.

Egg and Dart in the Gründerzeit.

Detail from yesterday’s door.

Corner grandeur.

Exotic windows over the lintel (from the same Siedlung as the previous door).

Detail from a door in the same Siedlung as yesterday’s door.

Door and non-door.

The detail from yesterday’s door features some vicious birds attacking a snake flanked by the heads of two sleeping kings. Perhaps…

An inconspicuous entrance.

Owl detail.

A pair of owls preside over yesterday’s door.

Liven up your Altbau with some tobacco-coloured seventies tiles.

A triangular cap.

A triangular cap.

Guard lion.

Detail from yesterday’s door: there is a lot of symbolism to unpack here…

In the world of Berlin doors, there is no such thing as ‘too much’…

Detail from yesterday’s door.

A touch of neo-classicism in the first flourish of modernity.

Lives of the great philosophers, or: detail from the House of Heads.

The house of heads.

Detail of the relief above yesterday’s door.

The keystone head.

[continued…] We’ll also be posting doors and details on Instagram, so feel free to join us over there: t.co/TV1S76zuyi We hope you’ll enjoy this voyage of discovery.

[continued…] The second post will feature an architectural or iconographic detail from the door (see below). The decorative imagery of Berlin doors can be arcane, but if you have any idea what it all means, feel free to reply.

Welcome to Doors of Berlin. Our goal is to provide you with the best – and strangest – doors Berlin has to offer, from Gründerzeit to PoMo. We’ll be posting two or three times a week, and many posts will consist of two parts. The first post will be an overview of the door:

Doors of Berlin, an investigation into the strange world of Berlin’s building entrances, will begin tomorrow.

Coming soon…